Proposed Sonny Carson Ave. Could Prompt a Council Fight

A battle over emblazoning the name of a black activist on a street sign is brewing at City Hall, with Speaker Christine Quinn and Mayor Bloomberg opposed to the measure and at least two City Council members favoring it.

Ms. Quinn said she wants Sonny Carson's name pulled from a list of 53 proposed street and intersection names, which includes Alvin Ailey Way and Jerry Orbach Way, to ensure it is not approved when the council votes on the list as a whole, as it is expected to do Monday.

Ms. Quinn said Carson's history of "anti-white" statements reflects a divisiveness that doesn't merit government recognition through a street sign.

Carson was a radical activist who led racially charged protests, including the boycott of groceries stores owned by Korean-Americans in Brooklyn after one store allegedly mistreated a black customer. In the 1970s, he was arrested on charges related to a murder, and was eventually sentenced to seven years in prison for kidnapping. He died in 2002.

"It's elevating someone," Ms. Quinn said of the street renaming. It's "saying that their contribution to the city of New York was such that we want to memorialize them."

Council Member Albert Vann of Brooklyn proposed renaming a portion of Gates Avenue after Carson, as Sonny Abubadika Carson Avenue.

Council Member Charles Barron of Brooklyn, a former Black Panther, said yesterday that if Ms. Quinn removes Carson from the list, he will demand to know the background of every person for which the council proposes to name a street.

"We got street names of slave holders and racists all over Brooklyn," he said. Carson is a hero and should be praised for his work in education and for helping former convicts find jobs, Mr. Barron said.

A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, Tamar Jacoby, the author of "Someone Else's House: America's Unfinished Struggle for Integration," a book about race relations in New York in the 1960s, said she was surprised Carson's name would be suggested for a street sign.

She said Carson was an opportunist who took the language of the civil rights movement and used it as an excuse to bully people.

"Sonny Carson was a simple thug," she said. "There ought to be an up or down vote on that name."