Racial Tension Over Martin Luther King Dog Park in Minneapolis

MINNEAPOLIS - The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board is considering putting an off-leash dog area in Martin Luther King Park, and it’s stirring up heavy emotions on both sides.

It’s a memorial park and some believe having a dog park there is disrespectful to the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Yet, the controversy is so typical of others lately ’ who decides what public spaces become sacred ground and what does that really mean for all of us?

There’s nothing that tells you the park in south Minneapolis is special, but for those like Charlie Mays who got the park’s name changed just months after Dr. King’s assassination in 1969, the park is a living, breathing memorial ’ not a place for a dog park.

’This park was dedicated to Dr. Martin Luther King,’ Mays said. ’The only association with dogs is Bull Conner set the dogs on the marchers.’

The Kingfield Neighborhood Association wants a dog park that stretches along the sound barrier for Interstate 35W, behind the soccer field and tennis bubble. The closest dog park is a couple of miles away next to Lake of the Isles.

"You are telling me I should be excluded from all parks because I have four legged children,’ one dog owner said. ’No disrespect, but I don't think Dr. King would come down on the opposite side of freedom.’

It echoes the controversy over Glenn Beck’s recent rally on the anniversary of King’s dream speech, and the fight over the Muslim community center near Ground Zero. Who decides what is sacred?

it doesn’t help that the city’s busiest park is named after Vice President John Calhoun, who was pro-slavery.

’I think it's becoming a race thing in the neighborhood here, and I'm concerned about that," a Kingfield resident said.

Yet, the thing about symbols and dreams ’ they are fraught with meaning, personal and profound.

’If you don't know that this is respectful to us, that's a problem on your side, not on our side,’ another resident said.

The Minneapolis park board is moving pretty cautiously on the dog park proposal and said no matter what happens with the issue, there needs to be something that tells people that Martin Luther King Park is something other than an abstract sculpture.