Fort Johnson. Oh, yes.
Renaming an Army fort after Albany’s Sgt. Henry Johnson would honor a true hero, and the Army itself.
When it comes to naming military installations, some basic qualifications seem obvious. Loyalty. Heroism. Service that’s inspiring and worth emulating.
The choice of a hero like Sgt. Henry Johnson is as clear as the choice of an incompetent insurrectionist like Gen. Leonidas Polk is ridiculous to this day.
A host of military installations around the South were named for former Confederate figures between World War I and World War II, Louisiana’s Fort Polk among them. But the death of a Black man, George Floyd, at the hands of Minneapolis police in 2020 sparked a national conversation on, among other things, the offensiveness of these enduring honors to people who rebelled against our republic in the cause of preserving chattel slavery.
A congressional commission has for more than a year looked at renaming military installations, and last week it unveiled nine recommendations. Among them was to change the name of Fort Polk to Fort Johnson.
And not a century too soon. Located about halfway between the Gulf of Mexico and Shreveport, La., Fort Polk was named for one of the worst generals in the Confederacy. He had almost no military experience, serving less than a year in 1827 before resigning for religious studies. He eventually became bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana, and in 1861 founded the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America, taking his cue from the state’s secession.
Quite a model American citizen, that one.
But there is even less to recommend General Polk as a military icon. His occupation in September 1861 of Columbus, Ky., prompted that state — which had been neutral at the outset of the Civil War — to seek help from the Union. At one point, he tried to resign, but was not allowed to. His lack of competence and his squabbling with his superior officer, Gen. Braxton Bragg, prompted Bragg to call him “unfit” in a letter to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. One military historian said Polk’s death in 1864 was a blow to the Union, considering the unintentional damage he did to the Confederacy.
Contrast that with Sergeant Johnson, who enlisted in the military in 1917 and served in World War I. He and his Black regiment served under French command because of his own country’s ban on allowing Black soldiers in combat. He was awarded the French Croix de Guerre for his heroism in fighting off a German attack with a rifle, a knife and grenades. Long denied recognition by his own country, Johnson was finally awarded a Purple Heart in 1996, the Distinguished Service Cross in 2002 and the Medal of Honor in 2015.
Johnson is as perfect a choice as one might imagine for the renaming of Fort Polk. An ordinary soldier whose courage was undeniable. A man honored with the highest military awards of two nations. And a fitting symbol of the effort to finally strip the honor of a namesake installation from those who sought to rend our nation. This is a name, and a person, to inspire those who step forward to serve their country.