Remove racist symbols from military bases
From 2013 to 2014, while serving as Fort Campbell’s senior military lawyer, the first African American to serve in this position, my drive to work was a daily reminder that the constitutional values I swore to uphold and defend were not reflected in the symbols surrounding me. My office building, which stood for justice, sat on Forrest Road.
The five main roads leading into Fort Campbell were originally named after Confederate generals. Over time, however, four of those roads were renamed to reflect the division’s proud history and its heroes. Today, only Forrest Road remains, presumably because its namesake is a native Tennessean revered throughout the state and other parts of the United States for his presumed military genius. History, however, provides a darker side of Nathan Bedford Forrest — it tells of his leadership of the Ku Klux Klan as its first Grand Wizard, his accumulated wealth through slave trading and slave labor, and his role in the massacre of over 300 black Union soldiers at Fort Pillow.
Fort Campbell, a military base that straddles the boundaries of Kentucky and Tennessee, is the home of the storied 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), a premier light infantry division that has played a critical role in every major war since World War II. African American soldiers are among the thousands who have fought and died alongside their 101st Airborne Division comrades of different races and creeds in defense of American ideals. Forrest Road’s existence dishonors their sacrifices. Therefore, I felt compelled to make an official request to change the name, a process fraught with institutional bias.
On June 9, Gen. Charles Q. Brown, the top Air Force officer, achieved a historic Senate confirmation as Air Force chief of staff and became the first African American man to hold the service chief position. When his four-year term begins on Aug. 6, Brown will have a seat at the table with other military service chiefs. And to his left or his right will sit Army Chief of Staff Gen. James C. McConville, the very leader who, in 2014, failed to rename Forrest Road. McConville’s decision is reflective of an old way of thinking that must be rooted out as George
Floyd’s death and subsequent national protests awaken a national consciousness about issues of race and equality.
At the time of my request, then Maj. Gen. James C. McConville was Fort Campbell’s commanding general. Like me, he was a West Point graduate, commissioned as an Army aviator and dedicated a career to military service. Our shared West Point values of duty, honor, country and our mutual belief in the Army’s seven core values were not enough to bridge our philosophical and racial divide. In spite of my recommendation and that of his African American division command sergeant major, McConville sided with Fort Campbell’s memorialization board, a body of Fort Campbell’s civilian employees vested with the task of recommending whether the road be renamed. This board, comprised almost exclusively of middle-aged Southern white males with a connection to the local Kentucky and Tennessee communities, neither reflected the racial diversity of the Army nor the values its soldiers risked their lives to defend. A decision to rename Forrest Road would have no doubt been met with opposition from local Tennessee groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who idolized Forrest and viewed the Civil War as a war fought over states’ rights — the believers of which conveniently leave out the principle state right to enslave African Americans.
In the face of politically tough decisions, Army leaders, like McConville, must, as Brown so pointedly stated in his June 5 video address, “want the wisdom and knowledge to lead, participate in and listen to necessary conversations on racism, diversity and inclusion.” Congressional and military leaders must not miss this inflection point in our country when Brown, the first African American service chief, is speaking of “a history of racial issues, and my own experiences that didn’t sing of liberty and equality.”
As momentum for renaming military bases grows in Congress, military leaders must use their existing authority to rename roads, buildings and other overt symbols on military bases that send an undeniable message to African American servicemen and women that the military finds nobility in men who chose to fight against a nation they swore to defend and for a cause that elevated wealth and tradition over freedom and decency.
Renaming Forrest Road and other racist symbols on military bases is a national security imperative. If this country expects mothers and fathers to send their African American sons and daughters to serve, fight and die for freedom, then the external symbols surrounding them must honor those heroes who understand and value its meaning.