BALTIMORE — The future rebuilding of the Francis Scott Key Bridge will create an opportunity for Maryland to rethink what it stands for, some advocates, legislators and historians say.

Local, state and federal officials have already vowed to rebuild the steel structure that once spanned the Baltimore skyline and collapsed March 26 when the cargo ship Dali crashed into it in the early morning hours, sending six construction workers to their deaths.

Some advocates have demanded that part of that process include rethinking what the rebuilt bridge should be called. Originally known as the Outer Harbor Bridge, it was named after Key in 1976 before opening in 1977.

While the bridge’s namesake is probably best known for writing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Key was also a slaveholder who found himself fighting both for and against Black freedom in his lifetime.

Addressing that contradiction with a name change isn’t about erasing the past said Carl Snowden, convener atop the Caucus of African American Leaders. It’s about fighting for the future, Snowden said, and that’s especially true in this case, as the six victims of the collapse were all Latino.

“They died literally on that bridge,” Snowden said. “To rebuild a bridge to someone who did not see people of color as their equal, I think sends the wrong message — not for this generation, but for generations yet unborn.”

William G. Thomas III is one of three authors who spoke on a panel April 17 at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Key’s alma mater. All the panelists said the state should consider renaming the Key Bridge.

“Naming is an opportunity for the community to consider who it honors and who it commemorates,” Thomas said. “I think naming a bridge or a building … should tell a story that helps us understand who we are and call forth a vision of who we aspire to be.”

The Caucus of African American Leaders, a statewide consortium of civil rights organizations, unanimously passed a resolution in April calling for renaming the bridge after the late U.S. Rep. Parren J. Mitchell, the first Black Marylander elected to Congress.

Snowden and Daryl Jones, who leads a national voting rights and social justice organization called the Transformative Justice Coalition, have been pushing the state to name something after Mitchell for “several years,” Jones said. But when the Key Bridge collapsed, “it presented the opportunity to rename this bridge for a very deserving American and a very deserving Marylander,” Jones said.

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