Things have
dramatically changed in the last several weeks.
One change I never expected to see was a serious call to rename the ten
United States Army Bases named after confederate generals. The fact that the popular support for this
change now extends into the military is a dramatic and pleasant surprise. I now
believe the renaming is inevitable. If Donald Trump were not president, the
process would already have started.
I don’t
want to debate whether the names of the bases should be changed. They should and will be. I want to discuss the new names for the
bases. As a 62-year-old white lawyer who has never served in the military, I
believe I am the ideal person to propose new names for the bases currently
named after confederate generals.
Not
surprisingly, the U.S. Army has rules governing the naming of military bases
and other facilities. The current rules are found in AR 1-33. The original draft of this post discussed these regulations in detail and even
quoted them at length. I reconsidered that. Basically bases are generally named after dead, especially meritorious,
high ranking members of the American Army—preferably people who had some connection
to the base or the area in which the base is located. While my suggestions do not fully fit within
these rules, rules can be changed. And the present is certainly a time when
change is in the air.
One way my
recommendations significantly differ from the rules is in the ranks of the
persons after whom the bases should be named.
None of my recommendations were generals. Many of them were privates, but
I do not think it matters. My
suggestions add infinitely more honor to the bases and the Army than do their
current namesakes.
The ten army
installations named after confederate leaders are Camp Beauregard, Louisiana,
Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Fort Polk, Louisiana, Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia,
Fort Pickett, Virginia, Fort Hood, Texas, Fort Lee, Virginia, Fort Rucker,
Alabama, Fort Gordon and Fort Benning, Georgia.
This New York Times article provides more information about both the bases
and the Confederates for whom they are named.
I have read a suggestion that Fort Benning should be renamed after General George C. Marshall. Under normal circumstances, this would be an
excellent suggestion. Marshall served at
Fort Benning as the Assistant Commander of the Infantry School for four and a
half years starting in 1927. Apparently,
he did an excellent job there and trained many of the men who went on to
command American Forces in World War II.
Further, Marshall eventually became one of the few five star generals
in American history and played a critical role in winning World War II. He went on to serve in many high ranking civilian
posts including Secretary of State.
There are two significant
problems with renaming Fort Benning after Marshall. First, while it is sometimes unfair to judge
historical figures by our current standards, the renaming of the confederate
bases is entirely about judging historical figures by current standards. According to a recent biography, George
Marshall: Defender of the Republic by David L. Roll, Marshall’s efforts to
reconfigure and improve the training program at Fort Benning did not extend to
the 841 black solders of the 24th Infantry Regiment which was
also headquartered at Fort Benning. Obviously, Marshall could not solve
racial discrimination and end Jim Crow. However, according to this biography, he virtually ignored the existence of the black soldiers while they were used
as a pool of indentured labor. Marshall
can be honored at another time in another way.
More
importantly, the fact that the ten bases were ever named after Confederate
Generals was a deliberate pro-Jim Crow, pro-racism move instituted by the
powerful political figures of the South—and the white people of the South—in
the post-reconstruction era of American History. The bases were named to send a clear message
to the world, and the black citizens of the United States, that whites are and
always will be superior to blacks. Even
the loss of a civil war devoted to keeping black people in slavery could not
change that.
The point of renaming
bases is to announce that things are and must be different. The decision to name the bases after
Confederate Generals was not just wrong, it was an act of moral bankruptcy on
the part of the entire country. This act cannot be rectified by simply following
the normal procedures for naming Army bases.
That would would probably result in the bases being named after eight to
ten deceased white male generals and, perhaps, one or two other less white or
less male generals.
If the regular
rules are to be followed, there will be a limited supply of eligible blacks for whom
to name the bases. The supply of high ranking deceased American black
officers who were great war leaders or heroes is limited because the American
Military was not integrated until 1948, and even since then, the process of
promoting Blacks into positions of authority has been slow.
In addition, I
believe that in a certain karmic way, these bases should be named after the people
who would most offend the Confederate Generals themselves.
There is a group of mostly forgotten people who served their country with
distinction in the military. Many of them died as a result of that
service. I am referring to the numerous
black servicemen who were lynched, often because they had the gall to wear
their military uniforms where white southerners could see them. I am also referring to some black servicemen who were attacked and but survived their lynching.
It will probable
not surprise anyone that I did not do my own original research into the
lynching of American servicemen.
Instead, I relied upon a report prepared by the Equal Justice
Initiative, Targeting Black Veterans: Lynching in America. I have listed thirteen soldiers who would be good choices for the honor of this renaming. However, I do not claim that my choices are
perfect and that no one else should be considered. There are people who know
a lot more about lynching, military bases, and black soldiers than do I. My suggestions simply suggest an approach to
choosing the new names.
I do not tie my
suggestions to a specific base. It may
not be possible to identify a lynched or nearly lynched serviceman who served
at each base. On the other hand, it
seems certain that servicemen were lynched in all the states containing these
bases so at least that much of a geographic tie could be found.
These are my
suggestions:
Peter Branford, a United States Colored Troops veteran of the civil war, was
shot and killed in Mercer County Kentucky in 1868, “without cause or
provocation.”
Johnson C. Whittaker, was born into
slavery in South Carolina in 1858. He was appointed a cadet at the United
States Military Academy in 1876—one of the first black cadets in West Point
history. On April 6, 1880 he was found
unconscious and bloody in his underwear on the floor of his dorm room—his legs
and arms tied to his bed. He reported
that three masked white men attacked him while he slept. The West Point administrators claimed that
Whittaker had staged the attack himself and court-martialed him.
.
Private James Neely had just
returned from service in the Spanish American War when he visited Hampton,
Georgia on a day pass from Fort Hobson.
He requested a soda at the counter of a drug store but was told he had
to place his order and drink outside behind the store. When he protested, a
fight developed. A group of white men chased him down the road firing
guns. He was later found dead of gun
shot wounds.
Private Charles Lewis returned home
to Tyler Station, Kentucky, after World War I. He was in jail after having been arrested
for assault and resisting arrest following a false accusation of robbery. A mob of as many as one hundred people took
him out of his cell and hung him from a tree on December 16, 1918.
Clinton Briggs, who had recently been
discharged from Camp Pike was lynched on August 3, 1919, in Lincoln, Arkansas,
because he moved too slowly out of the way of a white woman on the sidewalk. He was driven into the country, chained to a
tree, and riddled with bullets.
Lucius McCarty, a veteran, was lynched on
August 31, 1919, in Bogalusa, Louisiana. He was accused of an attempted assault
on a white woman. A mob of as many as 1500 people shot him more than a thousand
times. They dragged his body behind a
car through the black neighborhoods of the town and then burned his corpse in a
bonfire.
Sergeant Edgar Caldwell, a decorated
member of the 24th Infantry Regiment was stationed at Camp McClellan
near Hanniston, Georgia. He was attacked after he sat in the white section of a
street car. While being beaten by two
white men, Caldwell drew his revolver and killed one of the white men and
seriously wounded the other. The
military authorities ignored their own rules and allowed him to be taken into
custody by local police. Caldwell
was tried, convicted of murder, and sentenced to death within five days. The appeals were unsuccessful and he was hung
on July 30, 1920.
Sergeant Henry Johnson, served in
World War I. He, along with a wounded
compatriot, fought off an attack by 24 German solders, killing four and wounding
at least a dozen. Johnson sustained 21
wounds and was promoted to Sergeant. The
French awarded him the Croix de Gurre avec Palm since he was stationed in an area
where he worked with the French Army which had no problem letting him serve in
combat. Johnson was almost completely
disabled from his wounds. He protested
the racially discriminatory administration
of Veteran’s Benefits and so was discharged with no disability pay and left in
poverty. He died “penniless and alone in
1929” at age 32.
Eugene Bells angered local whites when he refused to
work for a white farmer after returning from World War II. Instead, he chose to
work on his father-in-law’s farm. On August
25, 1945, he was driving a car in Amite County, Mississippi with several
passengers. When three white men in
another car opened fire, Bells pulled over.
The men beat one of the other passengers unconscious and took Bells into
a swamp where they crushed his skull and shot him in the head.
Maceo Snipes, a honorably discharged two-and-a-half
year veteran of the Army living in in Taylor County Georgia voted in the
Democratic primary for governor on July 17, 1946. The next day several white men went to his
house. A white veteran shot and killed him.
The white veteran told a ridiculous story but the inquest ruled the
killing was self-defense.
John C. Jones, a World War II veteran, was lynched in
Minden, Louisiana on August 8, 1946. He was accused of entering a white
family’s back yard and looking through the window at a young white woman. Federal charges were brought against law
enforcement officials and others involved in the lynching, but they were acquitted
by an all-white jury.
J. C. Farmer, a black World War II veteran, was
lynched on August 17, 1946. Farmer was “merrily laughing” while waiting for a
bus in North Carolina when a police officer ordered him into his car. Farmer responded that he had done nothing
wrong so the police officer attacked him.
In the ensuing struggle, the officer’s gun went off and shot the officer
through his hand. A lynch mob formed and
killed Farmer.
Staff Sergeant Hosea Williams survived his
would be lynching and went on to become a major civil rights leader. During World War II, he was the only survivor
of a Nazi bombing which left him in a European hospital for more than a
year. Upon his return, while he was
still wearing his uniform, he was beaten by a group of angry whites who were
offended that he used the white rather than the colored water fountain. He survived the beating and lived until
2000. He was quoted as saying “I was
once captured by the German Army, and I want to tell you that the Germans were
never as inhumane as the state troopers of Alabama.”
