mlk jr. and toponymy in alabama

as I learned from reading Monmonier's From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow, time lag in place name changes are usually more of a bureaucratic disconnect between local, state and national mapping entities, than they are political issues.

But that doesn't stop politicians---and rightfully---from making political issues out of them. A small recent example from Alabama:

MONTGOMERY, Ala. The Martin Luther King Junior Expressway is back on the official Alabama road map.

... State Representative Alvin Holmes of Montgomery complained earlier this year that the official state map did not show the name of Interstate 85 through Montgomery... [but] the map did include the names of highways named for Confederate Civil War figures.

The governor's spokesman, Jeff Emerson, says in past years Alabama maps have included King's name beside I-85. He did not know why it was left off in recent years.

There's absolutely no way of telling what actually happened from just this information, but it seems unlikely that a figure with King's stature would be left off out of malice. If it were a lesser-known figure I might believe it, but King? That's like calling out Mahatma Gandhi. Oh.