September 4, 2015
Suddenly, President William McKinley (1897-1901) – one of only four American presidents killed in office – is in the news again. This week, his name was removed from North America’s highest mountain peak, located in Alaska.
This weekend, Americans will be marking the anniversary of the assassination of President McKinley, who was shot by “anarchist” Leon Czologsz at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, on 6 September 1901. The nation was traumatized as they had been with the murder of President Lincoln just 36 years before. With the shock of both shootings – and that of President Garfield in 1881 – still firmly in their minds, Americans looked to their daily newspapers to learn the latest news of McKinley’s condition.
McKinley lingered, then passed away the following week on 14 September 1901.
When national leaders such as Presidents Lincoln, McKinley and Kennedy, and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., are assassinated, the nation responds by renaming streets, schools and monuments for our fallen leaders.
In 1917 President Woodrow Wilson honored McKinley’s memory by signing “the Mount McKinley National Park Act, which required the park to be ‘dedicated and set apart as a public park for the benefit and enjoyment of the people under the name of the Mount McKinley National Park.’” (USA Today, 31 August 2015).
But Mount McKinley is no more. On Aug. 30, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced that the name of North America’s highest mountain is being changed back to its original name, Denali, which in the Athabaskan languages of Alaska Natives means “the high one.”
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