Army base renamed after Black veterans as military plans to stop honoring Confederates
Geoff Bennett:
Ninety-year-old Lieutenant General Arthur J. Gregg enlisted in the Army in 1946. He wanted to be a lab technician, but faced racial barriers, so went into logistics. He graduated from officer candidate school and retired after 36 years as the military's highest-ranking Black officer, his first assignment at the base that now bears his name with its whites-only officers club, which is also now named for him.
The base also commemorates the late Lieutenant Colonel Charity Adams, who commanded the first and only unit of mostly Black women officers to serve overseas during World War II.
It's all part of an effort to rename nine bases and hundreds of other military assets whose names celebrate the Confederacy, among them, Fort Bragg renamed Fort Liberty, Fort Hood renamed for Richard Cavazos, the Army's first ever four-star general of Hispanic descent, and Fort A.P. Hill renamed for Mary Edwards Walker, a Civil War surgeon who became a prisoner of war and the only woman ever to receive the Medal of Honor.
The naming commission was chaired by retired Navy Admiral Michelle Howard, the Navy's first female four-star and the first Black woman to command a U.S. Navy ship.
I spoke to her yesterday.
Welcome to the "NewsHour."
Adm. Michelle Howard (RET.), U.S. Navy: Thank you, Nick.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7sa7SZ6arn1%2Bjsri%2Fx6isq2ejnby4e8CrpLJlkpbApnnRnqWapZWZeqKy056pZpqclrCsedWeq56qkaPAbq3SZqSipJmprrPFjKmjmqajYsGwedKtpqllmKS7sL7Ip55mm5%2Bjs6awxKuYrZ2j