Burke, Virginia, is named after an enslaver. A journalist wants to change that

A ledger reading, at center, ‘one negro boy Fenton’, that David Martosko found in his research of Silas Burke. Photograph: David Martosko

A former reporter has launched a campaign to rename his Virginia hometown, Burke, to stop the commemoration of an enslaver and instead honor a child he enslaved, a six-year-old boy named Fenton.

“My town is named after an unusually horrible person,” David Martosko said, “but it doesn’t have to be. Names say something about who we are and what we aspire to become.