A proposed James Weldon Johnson memorial plaque on Wiscasset selectmen’s plate this week sounds like it would hit the right chord: The town and private hands chipping in a plaque on a downtown railing would show local support for civil rights awareness. That is a worthy cause anytime, and certainly in these last couple years with national incidents and the Black Lives Matter movement to address them and make a better, less fearful future.

I have seen no reports of any ties between Johnson and Wiscasset, specifically, before his death here in 1938 in a car-train crash. And it might seem a little awkward at first to mark where, as plaque proponent Lucia Droby correctly calls Johnson, a remarkable man, died in a car-train crash. But every day we all drive, bike, or walk past wreaths and crosses in our towns in spots where accidents claimed someone’s loved one. The only difference with the proposed plaque is it may have taken 80-plus years and a whole community to do the honoring.

Think of the plaque as an unofficial extension of Wiscasset’s wonderful Museum in the Streets signage, educating visitors and the rest of us on history, including Wiscasset’s people or those who also impacted Wiscasset and, in Johnson’s case, the nation, with his poetry and other works.

The “Streets” project also took years and it was well worth the effort, as this would be.