To move forward, we have to take full measure of people

If our country is to deal with our history of racism and move forward, we must encourage people to be willing to change and embrace new views. Otherwise we’re saying that because a person took a racist action earlier in their life, they must be a racist forevermore.

Adrian Walker states an undeniable fact – that the Red Sox were the last team to integrate, in 1959 (“A way to right Yawkey’s wrongs,’’ Page A1, Aug. 28). But he then goes on to assert that longtime Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey had a blind spot that apparently never went away.

Well, let’s look at some more facts: In 1979 Larry Whiteside of the Globe interviewed George Scott, a black Sox player who had direct interactions with Yawkey in the later part of Yawkey’s time as team owner. Scott called Yawkey “one of the greatest men I’d ever met in my life. If he was prejudiced in any way towards the black ballplayer, I did not detect it. . . . Mr. Yawkey told me he wanted me back in Boston.’’

People grow and learn. The evidence shows that by the 1970s, Yawkey had.

We shouldn’t hide his 1950s actions, but we also should not take away the recognition of the person he was by the end of his life. Yawkey Way should stay.

Susan Hammond

Cambridge

Renaming Yawkey Way would be way to reverse a curse

The Red Sox had an opportunity to sign Willie Mays in the early 1950s, but passed because Tom Yawkey reportedly refused. Imagine a Red Sox outfield in the ’50s and early 1960s with Ted Williams in left field and Mays in center. How many World Series championships would that lineup have produced?

There was a curse on this team — not the mumbo jumbo Curse of the Bambino, but the curse of racism. When the Sox finally won again in 2004, four of their most important players — Pedro Martinez, Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, and Dave Roberts — were athletes Yawkey would have passed on in Mays’s day.

John Henry, current owner of the Red Sox (and of the Globe), and former team president Larry Lucchino have it right, as Adrian Walker noted in his column “A way to right Yawkey’s wrongs.’’

It’s time to rename Yawkey Way, which would be a fitting and final way to end the real curse.

Jep Streit

Brookline

In revisiting our troubled past, avoid fighting words

The editorial “Tom Yawkey was no hero’’ makes some good points about renaming Yawkey Way, but it includes some unfortunate phrases. The first paragraph notes that New Englanders have never put up monuments to “racist traitors.’’ In the third paragraph, the assertion is made that the Commonwealth never erected monuments to “treasonous generals.’’ It is clear that the object of these words is, at least in part, General Robert E. Lee.

Such words and phrases are unhelpful in these contentious times. They might not even be accurate. Can’t one argue that Boston patriots in the 1770s who fomented revolution were traitors or engaged in treason?

Please, modulate the pitch and lower the volume.

Richard J. Hannah

Salem

Here’s a pitch for a new name . . .

While each of us has our own priorities, it was the 1967 Red Sox that changed Boston. And that team featured a man who deserves to be in the Hall of Fame and isn’t. Let’s put him in ours by giving him his street: Luis Tiante Calle.

Joel A. Feingold

Brookline

. . . and here’s another

If Yawkey Way is destined to be renamed, perhaps John Henry might consider a name honoring a multitude rather than an individual. This would also preclude the possibility of having to rename the street in the future due to unforeseen circumstances.

How about Fan Way?

Richard P. Garvey

Scituate