In 1986, Lambeth Council renamed it to honor Max Roach (1924–2007), the iconic African American jazz drummer and civil rights activist, who visited London that year for a GLC-sponsored tour and attended the park’s reopening. The renaming was part of a broader initiative to recognize contributions by people of African descent, alongside other local sites named after figures like Mahalia Jackson and Tessa Sanderson. Today, the park features a playground, "One O’Clock Club," nature trail, and a sculpture memorializing children killed in the 1976 Soweto uprising.
just across the road outside the Jam another one of the lost Effra plagues can be seen on the floor
Beneath and nearby flows the River Effra, a "lost river" of south London. Once a surface stream rising near Crystal Palace, it was culverted into Bazalgette’s sewer system in the mid-19th century. The Effra runs underground along Brixton Road, passing close to Max Roach Park its hidden course shaping the valley where the park sits. Though invisible today, the river’s legacy endures in local street names (e.g., Effra Road) and the park’s landscape, which follows the gentle slope of the former waterway.