DC, Maryland officials aim to remove white supremacist’s name from Chevy Chase Circle

CHEVY CHASE, Md. (DC News Now) — Congressional representatives and a senator introduced a bill Tuesday to remove a segregationist’s name from a park sitting in both Washington, D.C. and Maryland.

Reps. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.08) and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) are working to remove Francis Newlands’s name from Chevy Chase Circle, a federal park.

According to the National Park Service (NPS), Newlands formed the Chevy Chase Land Company, which developed the Chevy Chase neighborhood. He began buying land in Northwest D.C. and Montgomery County, Md., building roads, streetcars and an amusement park, while also making sure the community had schools, churches, water and sewage systems.

Newlands set prices so high that only affluent citizens (mostly white) could afford to live there at the time. Only members with access to wealth were allowed to move to the new neighborhood — while immigrants, Jews and people of color were not welcome in the neighborhood’s amenities.

He was also an outspoken white supremacist and promoted those beliefs, NPS said. He actively sought to repeal the 15th Amendment, which gave African-American men the right to vote. Newlands advocated that the U.S. should be a “homeland for whites.”

“Francis Newlands was a white supremacist who worked to make his developments, including Chevy Chase, inaccessible to Black, Jewish, and working-class families. We should not be memorializing him and the bigoted policies he stood for – the legacies of which are still harmful to this day,” Van Hollen said in an announcement about the recently introduced bill.

“Instead of glorifying those who promoted exclusion and division, we should be working together to build communities that support growth and economic inclusion for all,” he continued.

The bill would remove the plaque and inscriptions bearing his name from Chevy Chase Circle.