NO CHANGE

National Audubon Society Decides to Keep Enslaver’s Name

Local chapters of the bird conservation organization had already vowed to rename themselves.

The National Audubon Society decided it would not change its name on Monday after being pressured to drop its title associated with the slave-owning naturalist John James Audubon. The bird conservation organization’s board of directors held a closed-door vote and opted to keep the society’s current name, even after several local chapters vowed to rename themselves. Audubon, who cataloged the avian wildlife of North America in the early 19th century, had nine enslaved people working at his home in Kentucky and criticized the British government for behaving “imprudently and too precipitously” when it freed slaves in the Caribbean in 1834. The Audubon National Society was founded in 1905, more than 50 years after Audubon’s death in 1851. “The name has come to represent not one person, but a broader love of birds and nature,” Susan Bell, the chair of the society’s board, told The Washington Post. “And yet we must reckon with the racist legacy of John James Audubon, the man.”