Green Room Theatre Company respectfully suggests that the street be renamed to honor one of the heroic women who fought slavery, such as abolitionist and feminist Sojourner Truth, or Harriet Tubman, lionheart of the Underground Railroad.

Green Room Theatre Company’s year-long historical research for our new stage play, Displacement: Stories from Section 14, led our researcher Melissa Machulski to confirm my suspicion that Calhoun Street in Indio and Coachella is named after the infamous John C. Calhoun, the slave states’ most important Antebellum spokesperson and political theorist, and one of the most powerful politicians in American history. Calhoun argued on the US Senate floor that slavery was a positive good for the enslaved. He is also considered the father of Southern nationalism and secessionism. He introduced the doctrine of nullification, which laid the theoretical groundwork for secession and the Civil War.

Calhoun was himself a wealthy slaveholder who held more than 50 people in slavery. His political career spanned four decades from 1811 to 1850 as America’s vice president, secretary of state, congress member, and senator. Calhoun carried on an epic debate with New England senator Daniel Webster over slavery and its expansion into America’s western territories. Coincidentally, Calhoun also founded the Bureau of Indian Affairs, whose policies had a genocidal effect on America’s First Nations until late in the 20th century.

There are hundreds of streets in American cities, north, south, and west, still named after Calhoun. We can only guess why Indio’s city fathers decided to join other American cities in naming a prominent street after this superhero of the Slaveholding South.

In recent weeks I have spoken with city council members of Coachella, Indio, and Palm Springs to launch an initiative to change the street name to something we can all be proud of. If you are interested in helping with this initiative, contact info@grtccv.org.

David Catanzarite,
Executive Artistic Director