REBEL ROUSERS
Army defends street signs saluting Confederate generals at B’klyn base
Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee (top) and Stonewall Jackson still have names on signs at Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn.
THE ARMY HAS shot down demands to rebrand two Brooklyn streets that still bear the names of famous Confederate generals at the city’s only active military post.
The streets at Fort Hamilton — General Lee Ave. and Stonewall Jackson Drive — honor fighters who were “an inextricable part of our military history,” the Army wrote in a rejection letter to the Congress members from New York who had demanded the change.
“After over a century, any effort to rename memorializations on Fort Hamilton would be controversial and divisive,” Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff Diane Randon wrote to Brooklyn Rep. Yvette Clarke, who received the letter over the weekend.
“This is contrary to the nation’s original intent in naming these streets, which was the spirit of reconciliation,” Randon said.
Robert E. Lee and Thomas (Stonewall) Jackson — the men for whom the streets are named — both served at Fort Hamilton in the 1840s, about two decades before they became leaders of the Confederate Army in the Civil War.
Clarke blasted the decision— and said she’ll keep fighting it.
“These monuments are deeply offensive to the hundreds of thousands of Brooklyn residents and members of the armed forces stationed at Fort Hamilton whose ancestors Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson fought to hold in slavery,” Clarke said.
“For too many years, the United States has refused to reckon with that history.” Several residents of the Bay Ridge neighborhood that surrounds the military base agreed with her.
Armando Cordero, 53, a former Army soldier and National Guard officer who now installs security systems, said he wasn’t surprised by the Army’s reaction.
“I know where the military is coming from. It doesn’t make it right, but they will never admit they are wrong,” he said.
“Changing the streets’ names would be an admission they were wrong.”
He also added that Lee and Jackson, having trained in the North, “betrayed” the Union forces by fighting against them. Destiny Betts, a 17-year-old senior at Fort Hamilton High School whose parents are both in the military, said it would be a small but important gesture from the Army.
“They should take down the names, but first they should change the history books because making these men heroes is a lie,” she said.
“People don’t realize what’s behind these signs . . . It’s a much bigger issue than two streets and a military base,” she noted.
Clarke had written to the Army in June along with Reps. Jerrold Nadler, Nydia Velazquez and Hakeem Jeffries, all fellow Democrats from New York.
Their letter came weeks after the city of New Orleans made the controversial decision to remove the multitude of statues it had in public spaces that honored Lee and other Confederate soldiers.
But Fort Hamilton, as an active military base, is Army property — and outside the reach of city and state laws.
The Army has not made any effort to scrub any other Confederate names from its locations. Ten military bases, including Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Fort Hood in Texas, are named after Confederate officers. All 10 bases are in former Confederate states.