The city plans to co-name Station Plaza, the street parallel to the Rye Metro-North station, in honor of local civil rights leaders Orial and M. Paul Redd.
The City Council voted unanimously to sign a naming rights license agreement with the MTA, which owns the Metro-North train station as well as the roadway between Purchase Street and Peck Avenue known as Station Plaza, on May 21.
The MTA must sign off on the agreement, which will happen in the coming days, according to Interim City Manager Brian Shea. Following that, a sign finalizing the new name will be designed, and Shea said there will a “big event” in September “worthy of the occasion.”
The decision comes after months of advocacy by M. Paul Redd Jr. — the Redds’ son — and lifelong Rye residents Marion Anderson and Ingraham Taylor, who requested that the City Council name a space in honor of the Redd family earlier this year.
Upon hearing the vote last Wednesday, the room erupted in applause and the council turned to Taylor for comment.
“I hope that you looked up the Redds,” Taylor told onlookers about the couple who called Rye home for 50 years.
Multiple people in the audience had their phones out, filming her.
The Redds were instrumental in helping to build a network of legal experts, activists, and politicians in Westchester County at a crucial moment in history, a previous Record article noted.
Orial Redd grew up in Rye and graduated from Rye High School in 1942 — she was one of the few Black students there. She married M. Paul Redd in Port Chester in 1954, and together they founded the Port Chester-Rye branch of the NAACP.
She died this past summer, at the age of 100.
M. Paul Redd was a founding member of the Black Democrats of Westchester, a longtime member of the Westchester Democratic Party, and served on the Rye Democratic Committee for 46 years.
The Redds also co-owned the Westchester County Press — Westchester’s first African-American newspaper — according to Westchester Magazine.
M. Paul Redd died in 2009. One obituary memorialized him as “a longtime civil rights activist who wore his heart on his sleeve as well as on the pages of his newspaper.”
Though the Redds made their home in Rye, they still encountered discrimination in the predominantly white community.
Contributed photo
When they needed to move to a garden apartment in Rye Colony to accommodate their second child, many landlords and brokers turned them away — so they appealed to the Rye City Council.
“A Negro woman who had sought vainly for an apartment for her growing family appealed tonight to the City Council of this predominantly white community to support integrated housing,” a New York Times article from 1961 reads.
“She is Mrs. Orial Banks Redd, a college graduate and music teacher and the wife of M. Paul Redd, the owner of a floor-waxing business,” the article continued.
Orial Redd was supported by “a score of residents.” Several of these residents were white.
The landmark case they brought over housing in Rye led to the passage of the anti-discrimination legislation in New York called the Redd Bill in 1962.
Six decades later, the Rye City Council chambers once again filled with voices advocating for the Redd family, this time to honor their legacy.
The likely location of the sign, according to Shea, will be the entrance to Station Plaza off of Peck Avenue — fittingly adjacent to Rye Colony.
