Ten Army bases are named after Confederate officers, and all are in the South. Current and former military officials have publicly expressed support for renaming them. On June 10, in a rare display of bipartisan unity, the Senate Armed Services Committee advanced an amendment by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to have the bases renamed within three years. On Wednesday, by a bipartisan margin of 33-23, the House Armed Services Committee followed suit, adding an amendment to rename these bases within a year of passage to its version of the NDAA. In a June 29 speech on the Senate floor, Warren said: “They are not named for men who risked their lives defending the United States and its soldiers. They are named for men who took up arms against the United States of America and killed American soldiers in the defense of slavery.”
And yet President Trump has strongly voiced his opposition. Late Tuesday night, he tweeted a threat to veto the National Defense Authorization Act if it passes with the amendment offered by Warren, to whom he referred using a racist and sexist slur. Trump, who has a history of defending the Confederacy, previously described the bases in a tweet as “part of a Great American Heritage.”
Warren and others rightly recognize the preservation of slavery and the promulgation of white supremacy as the cornerstone objectives of the Confederacy. However, we must not overlook the historical context in which these facilities were built and named — World War I and World War II. During that time, thousands of African American soldiers served in the United States military. Naming bases after Confederate officers reflected how white supremacy functioned as a unifying strategy and seeped into institutions across the country, including the military. Black troops had to confront daily reminders of what the Confederacy stood for and that despite their patriotism, the nation’s purported values and ideals did not apply to them.