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Critics Want Racist Senator's Name Stripped From Reno Park

RENO, Nev. (AP) — Residents have launched an effort to rename a southwest Reno park honoring a powerful 19th-century politician who had racist beliefs unbeknownst to most.

Khalilah Cage told the Reno Gazette-Journal she had no idea the park where she often plays with her children is named after the U.S. senator from Nevada. Francis Newlands is best known as the father of the first major irrigation project in the West in the early 1900s. But he also believed Black people shouldn't be allowed to vote.

Cage wants to rename Newlands Park and remove the stone monument that memorializes his legacy.