To Rename 19th Street to MS. Annie Abrams STREET

Celebrating a Living Legend...The Little Rock Community in concert with New Africa Alliance has submited applications to request that the name of 19th Street be renamed to Ms. Annie Abrams Street ( Community Activist, Community Leader, Living Legend) Sign the petition Today, contact your local Officials and let them know. We want to celebrate our community treasures, our living legends. Rename 19th Street in Honor and dedication of Miss Annie Abrams.

Ms. Abrams has been a very active and vital part of the Arkansas Development. 
In an illustrated history of signal African-American events in the past half century, one person would be always in the picture: Ms. Annie Mable McDaniel Abrams.

She'd be by Daisy Bates' side in a tableau of the 1957 crisis. Presenting Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller a gift of buttermilk in 1971. In Little Rock's Martin Luther King Marade, which she founded in 1986. Whispering into Bill Clinton's ear, as she was in an Associated Press photograph. Whispering into Blanche Lincoln's ear, in another. And Gov. Mike Beebe's, in a third.

At age 78, retired from a career in education for 17 years, she's still very much on the scene, representing the Coalition of Greater Little Rock Neighborhoods at Little Rock Board of Directors meetings, challenging state Lottery Director Ernie Passailaigue at a Political Animals lunch, attending benefits for Our House, on whose board she sits. At lectures at the Clinton School of Public Service, where she's known as Little Rock's Helen Thomas because she's sure to ask a question. (She's known as "Miss Annie" otherwise.)

Abrams is herself a walking, talking history book. It's history in an often circuitous form ? But Abrams doesn't live in the past. She's current on the issues of today, and the go-to person for state and local politicians.

If it's hard to point a finger to Abrams' individual achievements, it's because her impact has been as a voice, expressing, in every forum, the many concerns of the people. Perennially described as an “activist” and a “neighborhood leader” in newspaper articles (or “Little Rock's own dear Annie Abrams” on the Democrat-Gazette editorial page), Abrams says her real contribution is communicating “the big picture, the long-term impact on future generations” of today's actions.

“It's very hard to reduce Annie to the written page,” said Kathy Wells, a long-time activist who will succeed Abrams as president of the Coalition of Greater Little Rock Neighborhoods. “She is a treasure that is not sufficiently recognized in the work of improving our community.” Wells' word for Abrams: “In all capital letters, FACILITATOR.”