MLK Avenue: Route of racial divide.

Byline: Sylvia Lim

Jan. 14--BRADENTON -- Boundaries. For James "Son" Copeland, 82, that used to mean being hassled by police if he was found on the west side of town. For Cherie Johnson, 73, eating out was getting to-go boxes from the back of a restaurant. For activists across the country, fighting for a street to be named after Martin Luther King Jr. meant testing the tolerance of white America. Almost 15 years ago, Bradenton activists won that battle -- exactly 31/2 miles of it. On Dec. 23, 1992, Bradenton city officials approved a resolution to rename a portion of Ninth Avenue, between 14th Street West and 27th Street East, after King. A year later, a similar effort to rename 17th Street West in Palmetto -- spiked with controversy and legal threats -- failed.

The obstacles faced by local activists were not uncommon in the nationwide push to name streets after King, the civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, was assassinated April 4, 1968. "What is ironic about this is that as I constantly reflect on King's legacy; he was the one to constantly change the boundaries that separate blacks and whites," said Derek Alderman, an East Carolina University professor who has studied streets named after King for more than a decade.

"Those same boundaries he fought against are still here." What's in a name? Naming a street is a symbolic gesture, dating back to…