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sent the board an email last week urging that the sites continue to include the word "Negro." Museum curator Porter Williams said some of the sites were initially known by a different, offensive term.
• "Negro to black people is not offensive. That's what we are. We're Negro people, black people. Negro means black," Williams told The Associated Press in a telephone interview after the meeting.
• The South Dakota Legislature in 2009 passed a law requiring that any place with that word be renamed, but Williams said using the term is recognition that black people helped develop the state.
• "It does say we were here. They're trying to write us out of history. We're trying to preserve our history," Williams said.
• The state board had sought public suggestions on replacement names for a ridge, a canyon, a hill, a gulch and a creek in western South Dakota. They received suggestions by mail and email, but no one testified in person Tuesday.
• Board members discussed a few suggested names but then decided to delay a decision. The board will publish notices in newspapers to invite public comment. In the meantime, the panel will continue work on renaming places that include the word "Squaw," a term offensive to Native Americans.
• Board chairman J.R. LaPlante, state secretary of tribal relations, said the board may have to ask the state Legislature to take another look at the renaming law.
• June Hansen, a board member who works for the state Transportation Department, said the U.S. Board on Geographic Names -- which has the final say on name changes -- does not consider "Negro" to be an offensive word.
• Sioux Falls City Council member Ken Anderson called board members Tuesday to urge them to take another look at the issue. Anderson, who is black, said "Negro" is a term used historically to refer to black people, and most do not feel it is offensive.
• "I would hope we would look for a better compromise than completely removing any historical reference to the contributions that blacks have made, that African Americans have made, in South Dakota," he said.
• The 2001 South Dakota Legislature passed a law to start eliminating offensive names, and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names has since changed the names of 20 places in the state. The 2009 law listed 15 other names that hadn't been changed and created the new state board to tackle the job.
• Most of the places are so small they do not appear on most maps, officials said.
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