City Fixes 42-Year Community Center Misnomer: 'We Owe It To Him'

SANTA CRUZ, CA — The Santa Cruz City Council unanimously voted last month to take the name “Louden Nelson” off of plaques, memorials and the community center after 42 years.

Who was "Louden Nelson" and what did he do to lose his honored status among Santa Cruz residents? He never existed.

"Louden Nelson" existed only on paper, a misspelling of the name of London Nelson, one of the city’s first Black residents. The typo appeared on various tributes to Nelson throughout the city: a monument at Louden Nelson Plaza, a mural at Mission Hill Middle School and, until recently, the community center.

“There's so much in a person's name,” said Iseth Rae, the community center's supervisor. “We owe it to him. Correct the name, and make sure that he is honored appropriately.”

The council voted to change the name to London Nelson Community Center and to fix Nelson's name on other locations and landmarks that honor him.

London Nelson's Legacy

Nelson lived in Santa Cruz in the mid-1800s, one of only two Black residents in 1856, Good Times Santa Cruz reported.

He was born into slavery on a cotton plantation in North Carolina in 1800. Nelson was taken to California in 1850 following news of the Gold Rush. He eventually purchased his freedom and traveled around California as a cobbler, the city's agenda report said. He arrived in Santa Cruz in 1856 and leased a cabin along the San Lorenzo River.

He grew produce and worked as a cobbler, which allowed him to purchase his cabin and the land it sat on before his death in May 1860.

Nelson gave an oral will on his deathbed and bequeathed all his belongings to local schools. The school district inherited Nelson’s 6-acre lot and sold it to pay for the land and construction of a new building, which today houses the Santa Cruz City Schools administration office at 133 Mission St., according to the agenda report.

'Give Credit Where The Credit's Due'

Santa Cruz native Brittnii Potter spearheaded recent efforts to change the name. She said she remembered the day her mother told her that the name on the center was wrong; Potter was only about 8 years old.

“I remember always feeling really slighted,” she said at the City Council meeting. “We know his name is not correct, and yet no one does anything about it. We don’t call Jack O’Neill 'John O’Neil'; we give the credit where the credit’s due.”

Potter grew up spending birthdays, summer camps and Juneteenths at the erroneously named center. She always felt welcome at the center, even as a Black woman living in a predominantly white area, she added.

In the summer of 2020, when protests against racism and police brutality against Black people took to the streets, Potter had an idea.

“In the midst of the pandemic last year, I really got to thinking, 'What’s a positive thing that I can do for our community, in the Black community?'" she said. "And that was the first thing that popped into my mind.”

Potter started a change.org petition and described the importance of Nelson and the center and accurately spelling his name. More than 1,300 signed her petition.

Potter took her cause to Rae and recreation Superintendent Rachel Kaufman, who put together a team to study the history of the name and come to a decision about renaming the city’s historical landmarks.

Historical Opposition

Potter wasn't the first to try to change the community center's name.

The name change was first suggested to the city council in 1984, agenda report documents said. It had only been a few years after the center was built in 1978 and named for Nelson in 1979, along with the Louden Nelson Plaza.

Lowell Hunter Sr., president of the Louden Nelson Association, and other members of the Black community — including Potter’s grandmother, Good Times reported — pushed for the Laurel Community Center to be renamed in honor of Nelson.

“I consider this a great day and a successful effort to keep a person’s name alive who contributed to society,” Hunter said on the day of the renaming, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported in 1979, referencing the agenda report.

When a group of historians brought up evidence that there was no Louden Nelson at all and suggested changing the center’s name, members of the Black community opposed it, the agenda report said. The community had fought for the name Louden Nelson; they had grown attached to it, and they didn’t want it to change, according to the agenda report.

“They kind of had ownership of the success that they had in getting the center named after Mr. Nelson to begin with, and they just didn't feel it was time to make a change,” Rae said. “So although the city was in support of changing the name to London Nelson at the time, the message was received that members of the Black community did not want that at that time.”

The City Council unanimously voted to keep the name Louden Nelson Community Center in 1984, the city reported.

How 'London' Became 'Louden'

The task force looked for members of the Black community who were in Santa Cruz and involved with the decision in 1984. Rae said they found Ida Johnson, who was familiar with the opposition in 1984. According to Rae, Johnson said that if a decision was to be made, it would need to be based on thorough research and factual documentation.

The team pored over more than 100 documents from 1852 to 2020, comparing loops and letters to find the truth.

Rae described the basis of the confusion and how Santa Cruz came to know London Nelson as "Louden": the fanciful cursive writing made it difficult to distinguish between letters, she explained. The team found documents that referred to Nelson as Louden Nelson, Shannon Nelson, London Neilson, Lindon Nelson and Ludlow Nelson.

The judge that ruled on Nelson's probate case years after his death in 1830 mistakenly wrote his name as “Louden.” Others looked to the document for reference, and Louden Nelson started showing up on more papers. Even London’s tombstone, erected in 1876, bears the name "Louden."

But before the judge’s mistake, Nelson had been known as London on all documents from the time of his death in 1860, including on his last will and testament, according to the city’s agenda report. Other enslaved people owned by Matthew Nelson also bore the names of British cities: Marlborough, Cambridge, Canterbury. There is no city named Louden, England, but there is a London.

This evidence convinced the task force.

“This is the name that for what we can tell, is the name that he chose to go by once he was a free man, and could theoretically choose whatever name he wanted,” Rae said. “From the time that he was free until the time that he passed, to the best of our knowledge and records, London Nelson is who he chose to be known as.”

The community center's name change took effect just in time for its first event since closing amid the coronavirus pandemic: Juneteenth.

“I think with the center, along with his gravestone and the other landmarks that are mislabeled, they all need to reflect who he was,” Potter said in closing at the meeting. “This will also create dialogue in the community, and the community will also really know who Mr. Nelson was and is.”