For years, a 14-block stretch of road along the Mississippi River in Minneapolis was named after Edmund Walton, a real estate developer who introduced racially restrictive covenants to Minnesota.

The Minneapolis City Council Thursday voted to rename Edmund Boulevard to Lena Smith Boulevard.

Council member Aurin Chowdhury sponsored the name change.

"In the street renaming, we not only reject the actions of a really painful past, but we uplift the stories that have often been erased and dismissed,” she said. “I really want to give flowers to the person we are really honoring today, and that is Lena Olive Smith."

Smith was Minnesota's first Black woman lawyer. She was also elected to be the first woman president of the Minneapolis NAACP. She is best known for “representing the Arthur and

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