Four years ago, a white supremacist who had posed with Confederate flags shot and killed African American parishioners at a South Carolina church. It set off a wave of reckoning about the country’s Confederate past and the current display of monuments and named tributes to the Confederacy.

Weeks later, petitioners in Virginia called on the state to eliminate Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ name from the Route 1 highway through Alexandria and Arlington.

On Wednesday, the Commonwealth Transportation Board voted unanimously to change the name from Jefferson Davis Highway to Richmond Highway.

The county will change the signs no later than October, after a public engagement campaign to make sure businesses and residents are aware of the change, says Arlington County Board Chair Christian Dorsey.

Alexandria, which has a different mechanism to change road names since it is a city rather than a county, changed the name of its portion to Richmond Highway earlier this year.

“This is past time,” says Dorsey. “And that means that our community has been living with a name that doesn’t reflect our values and has all sorts of negative consequences for far too long. Tomorrow can be different, but also should leave us a little sad that it’s taken this long.”

The CTB took the vote at a hotel in Crystal City with a Jefferson Davis Highway address.

Nearly every speaker, including representatives of the local Chamber of Commerce, the Crystal City business district, JBG Smith developers and more, spoke in favor of removing the name during the public comment period.

Several say they’ve lost business or conferences have moved to other hotels because of the Confederate address. Others had issues with visitors finding them — Google Maps has displayed “Richmond Highway” for months.

Arlington County officials estimate it will cost about $17,000 to swap out street signs.

But the change will not affect mail. The U.S. Postal Service will continue to deliver mail addressed to Jefferson Davis Highway indefinitely if senders don’t change the address.

In 1922, the Virginia General Assembly designated Route 1 as Jefferson Davis Highway at the request of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. It was a direct response to the cross-country Lincoln Highway, constructed years earlier.

Arlington County had long wanted to remove the Confederate president’s name from their 2.5-mile portion of the road.

The highway’s name was thrust back into the spotlight again last fall when Amazon announced it would set up shop in Crystal City along the thoroughfare.

Because state law treats road naming differently for cities and counties, the county first thought it had to win a vote of the legislature to change a road name.

But last March, Del. Mark Levine (D-Alexandria) asked Attorney General Mark Herring to rule on the wording of the law. Herring found that the decision rests with the transportation board.

“We all call it Route 1 because we don’t want to call it by its real name,” Levine said during Wednesday’s public comment period. “This road is not historical [named during the Civil War]… it was named in 1922… specifically to terrorize the black population.”

Confederate names still appear on schools and roads across Virginia, but it’s now gone from Arlington’s prominent highway.

This story first appeared on WAMU.