At the 1999 Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration, the Reverend Harold Middlebrook brought up an issue that had been gathering momentum among the Knoxville African American community—that although Peyton Manning did not win a national championship, a city street had been named for him, but neither Tee Martin, the quarterback of the 1998 championship team, nor Chamique Holdsclaw, the highly-decorated women’s basketball player, had been similarly honored.
Dewey Roberts, president of the Knoxville Chapter of the NAACP attributed the failure to recognize Martin and Holdsclaw to their race. At the celebration, County Commissioner Diane Jordan and Knoxville-area Urban League President Rosemary Durant-Giles joined Middlebrook and Roberts in urging those in attendance to push government leaders to name streets in East Knoxville for the two. Mayor Victor Ashe changed on-campus street names to honor Holdsclaw and National Championship team coach Phillip Fulmer in spring 1999 and, with the completion of Tee Martin’s career at Tennessee, had South Stadium Drive renamed Tee Martin Drive in March 2000.