The honorary name of “Joe Madison Way” will hang on blue signs along with the regular signs for Cowart Avenue.
At Wednesday’s Dayton City Commission meeting where the street renaming was approved, Dayton Mayor Jeff Mims said that two of Madison’s favorite phrases boiled down to “What are you going to do about it?”
He also said that Madison would encourage callers to learn more about their state’s politics.
“When individuals would call his radio station and complain about different things …”, Mims said, “he was always asking individuals to name the two senators in their state. And sometimes they could not do that, he’d ask them to go back and research that information then call him back.”
Madison, who grew up on Cowart Avenue, was a 1967 graduate of Roosevelt High School, then graduated from Washington University in St. Louis. At age 24, he became the youngest executive director of the NAACP’s Detroit branch, then was later appointed the NAACP’s National Political Director.
Credit: Alex Brandon
Credit: Alex Brandon
He was well known for voter registration marches, including the cross-country “March for Dignity” from Los Angeles to Baltimore to gather signatures for an anti-apartheid bill in Congress.
His radio career began in 1980, spanned multiple cities and finished with 15 years on SiriusXM. He broke the Guinness World Record for the longest on-air broadcast (52 hours) while raising more than $250,000 for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
The honorary road signs will hang on Cowart Avenue for a period of two years, according to the resolution. Cowart Avenue is just east of Abbey Avenue, near the former Inland/Delco/Delphi plants, where the Wright Factory buildings sit.
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