Changes sought to relieve bottleneck in popular Detroit street naming program

Thirty years after blues legend John Lee Hooker’s name was memorialized in a sidewalk star along Hollywood Boulevard, his family is struggling to get a street named after him in the city that birthed his music. 

Hooker was nominated for Detroit’s Secondary Street Sign program in 2022 – the longest wait of  more than two dozen applicants up for consideration by the City Council later this year. This is the last chance Hooker’s family has to get one of five honorary blue signs awarded annually before having to start the process all over.

“If we don’t get it this year, then we let it go,” said Hooker’s grandson Glenn Thomas. “He is recognized all over the world, and I guess Detroit can catch up later on.”

Detroit’s honorary street designation program faces a bottleneck that’s become mathematically impossible to manage.

Historic Preservation Planner Janice Tillmon asked the City Council in February to consider changes – like raising the cap on winners or limiting new applications – as a growing number of candidates compete for a tight pool of awards. Tillmon is pushing for reforms before the council votes on its latest round of street sign honorees this fall, but said it likely won’t be revisited until after the council approves the budget in April. 

“I need for (the council) to understand what the impact is on the petitioners, on the community, because a lot of them are upset,” Tillmon said. “There is a lot of frustration. The human side of it is the reason I want to make a change, because this should be a celebration.”

The City Charter sets an annual limit of five blue ceremonial street sign awards to be fixed above the official street name. Unsuccessful applicants remain on the list for four additional years. Tillmon said it’s creating a widening pool of candidates as the program becomes more popular. 

Tillmon has been researching how other cities honor notable residents. She found Detroit is the only city that lets applicants roll over, and has a uniquely low cap on the number of winners. The limit was set under an ordinance change in 2019, but Tillmon said it’s unclear why. 

Chicago has a maximum of 100 street signs to hand out annually. Each member of Chicago’s version of the City Council can select two candidates. If Detroit had the same standard, there would be 18 available spots. Other cities like Grand Rapids and Lansing don’t limit the number of honorary signs at all.

Paul LaBell met legendary Detroit Free Press Photo Chief Tony Spina during a school trip to the newsroom. LaBell hung back after his high school classmates moved on, striking what would become a long friendship.

LaBell helped advocate for awarding Spina a street sign last year. It was unsuccessful despite securing letters of support from institutions like the Detroit Historical Society, Detroit Institute of Arts, four City Council members and other prominent residents. 

“The number of people who are allowed in is really the issue,” LaBell said. “If the number were more realistic, it would be less of a problem. This is an opportunity for the city to recognize and do something so that their names and their work and efforts continue to live on.”

“How else are these people going to live on in the minds and reputations of people?” 

Roughly 100 people showed up to the City Council vote last October. Supporters of Gregory Mudge waved cutouts of his face. He had been on the list since 2022 and was the only rollover candidate picked.

The other four — musician Kem Owens, former City Council member JoAnn Watson, activist Viola Liuzzo, and Imam Abdullah El-Amin — received enough votes on their first year of eligibility. 

“There were family members who were in tears (after the vote),” Tillmon said. “I got in the elevator with a husband and wife, the wife was in tears and the husband was in shock. I said ‘there’s always next year,’ but he was really upset. He said ‘my person didn’t get one vote.’” 

There’s 18 candidates on this year’s list who are holdovers from previous years. Supporters of Rev. Clarence L. Crews have waited since 2023 and six other applicants have been on the list since 2024.

Even if no new applications came in, it would take four years to accept them all. Tillmon said nine more applications are being processed, which could result in 27 total candidates this year. There were seven total in 2022.

Possible changes floated by Tillmon for consideration include:

• Reduce the number of years unsuccessful applicants can remain on the list before having to start the process over 
• Put a cap on the number of applicants that can be accepted each year
• Require all applicants to gather petitions, removing an exception for those who are sponsored by a City Council member
• Allow each council member to select one or two nominees
• Create themes for each year, only considering applicants who can demonstrate an impact on art, education or other specific issues
• Establish a moratorium on new applications until the list is narrowed down 

Tillmon said she’s not advocating for any particular solution, so long as it prevents the number of applications from continuing to grow. 

Who’s most worthy? 

Honoring residents with a blue ceremonial street sign dates back to 1984. Former Mayor Coleman A. Young gave the first to civil rights legend and New Bethel Baptist Church founder Rev. C.L. Franklin after his death. The sign is still posted at the corner of Linwood and West Philadelphia.

Tillmon compiled a list of 68 documented secondary street sign awardees in Detroit. Nearly all of them came after 2015.

Applications are accepted until July 1 each year. There is a non-refundable $675 fee, or $400 for applications sponsored by City Council members. There’s an additional $400 installation fee covered by the applicant..

Detroit’s eligibility guidelines require the candidate to have lived in Detroit for at least 10 years, died at least five years ago and had a positive impact on the “cultural, social, economic, or political history of the city, state, nation, or world.”

The process is inherently political, since the winners are selected by a vote of the City Council. 

Council members can also sponsor applicants, allowing them to avoid gathering signatures from community members. Council sponsorship exempts applicants from the requirement to be deceased at least five years. 

Council Member Latisha Johnson said the council should consider ways to acknowledge the impact of neighborhood figures who don’t have large public profiles, since street sign selection is a “highly politicized exercise.” 

LaBell said Spina’s advocates put a lot of work into lobbying council members. Award-winning photos of historic events were sent to each member. LaBell personally met with several of them. 

Thomas sent letters to the City Council to advocate for Hooker, but no members of the body endorsed his application. Thomas plans to start lobbying council members this spring. 

Thomas said it was disheartening to watch Owens selected over Hooker and George Clinton, the “Father of Funk.”

“You have people who were community activists and did a lot of different things in the city, but it’s an embarrassment to the city of Detroit not to (recognize) one of the pioneers of music,” Thomas said. “The whole music scene (Hooker) brought parlayed into the Motown sound. It’s all politics, I saw that from the get-go.” 

Tillmon said another advocate wanted to withdraw his application out of frustration because their candidate had been waiting for three years. She said there’s a perception that celebrities jump the line, but star power and local impact aren’t necessarily the same metric.

“My grandfather did a lot for the music world and it took a long time to be recognized,” Thomas said. “(Detroit) is the one place that should be able to recognize him as where he started. He got a bunch of recognition in Mississippi, even though he left at a young age and didn’t go back. He has a star over an Oakland Walk of Fame because of the impact he had on the music scene when he got to California. What bigger impact did some of these people have versus him?” 

The bottleneck has forced residents into uncomfortable competition to compare the impact of their loved ones.

“I read through the bios of every candidate; I wanted to know what kind of eligibility Tony would have compared to those other people,” LaBell said. “I thought all of them were worthy of a secondary street sign, but I thought Tony was more worthy.”

Applicants must submit a preliminary application to HDAB staff prior to officially submitting their application to the City Clerk. Direct inquiries to historic@detroitmi.gov or (313) 224-3487.