San Francisco’s Sir Francis Drake Hotel ditches old name
Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco’s Sir Francis Drake Hotel will be called The Beacon Grand when it is set to reopen this spring. It the latest attempt in the Bay Area to rename streets and landmarks after the slave-trading explorer. For 94 years the hotel paid tribute to Francis Drake, the first English sea captain to circumnavigate the globe in the 1500s. But he also participated in slave-trading voyages and the use of his name came under scrutiny as the Black Lives Matter movement prompted a nationwide reexamination of place names with ties to racism. A spokeswoman for the hotel says the rebranding of the hotel will preserve components of the property’s past.
