Glasgow Streets. One of the most important clues to the history of an area comes from street names. Some of the popular street names in and around Glasgow city centre include Glassford Street (named after John Glassford); Ingram Street (named after Archibald Ingram); Buchanan Street (named after Andrew Buchanan); Dunlop Street (named after Colin Dunlop).
Glasgow streetnames, showing Buchanan Street & Nelson Mandela Place. Credit Steven Collis. Attribution-NonCommerical-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). https://www.flickr.com/photos/stevencollis/47615014732/
These streets are named after people who were major slave owners. During the 18th century, Glasgow was home to many slave owners who bought Africans to work on plantations and profited from it. As such, much of Glasgow’s wealth comes from the tobacco, the sugar, the cotton that was created and sustained by enslaved black people.
While Glasgow, like other British cities, is urged to do more in recognising the contributions of black people in their development, Glasgow has taken some steps. Notably is changing the name of St George’s Place in the city centre to Nelson Mandela Place. This was done in 1986, at a time when many others regarded Mandela as a terrorist. By this singular action, Glasgow brought a lot of attention to his unjust imprisonment and fight against white minority rule in South Africa.