One-block long Martin Luther King, Jr. Place, which runs from Marcy to Tompkins Avenues a block south of Flushing Avenue in Bedford-Suyvesant, might seem inconsequential, but it was the first street in NYC named for the famed civil rights titan, who was murdered on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, TN. It was renamed in 1974.
Ironically its old name, Floyd Street, marked the only street in the area named for a signer of the Declaration of Independence from New York, William Floyd (1734-1821). The William Floyd Parkway in his adopted home of Brookhaven in Suffolk County will have to suffice. His descendants include guitarist/singer David Crosby and former Massachusetts Governor William Weld; Abraham Lincoln was a distant cousin.
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