The U.S. military is now rethinking its traditional connection to Confederate Army symbols.
Adm. Mike Gilday, chief of naval operations, said Tuesday that he directed his staff to begin crafting an order that would prohibit the Confederate battle flag from all public spaces and work areas aboard Navy installations, ships, aircraft and submarines.
“The order is meant to ensure unit cohesion, preserve good order and discipline, and uphold the Navy’s core values of honor, courage and commitment,” Gilday said in a Facebook post.
In a video posted last week on the Navy’s YouTube page, Gilday addressed the death of George Floyd.
“We can’t be under any illusions about the fact that racism is alive and well in our country, and I can’t be under any illusions that we don’t have it in our Navy,” he said.
People in Kingsland, Georgia, who News4Jax spoke with had mixed feelings about Tuesday’s announcement by the Navy’s top admiral.
“It’s not good, but it’s not bad at the same time, as long as we acknowledge what those flags represented and acknowledge our past,” said Alex Prentice.
Pat Armstrong said: "It’s a good step in a good direction to help everyone because it’s been too much going on for too long that needs to be corrected.”
The announcement follows the example of Gen. David Berger, the commandant of the Marine Corps, who last week directed Marine commanders to remove public displays of the Confederate battle flag carried during the Civil War. The flag, which some embrace as a symbol of heritage, “carries the power to inflame feelings of division” and can weaken the unit cohesion that combat requires, Berger has said.
“The Confederate battle flag has all too often been co-opted by violent extremist and racist groups whose divisive beliefs have no place in our Corps,” the Corps said in a separate statement last Friday. “Our history as a nation, and events like the violence in Charlottesville in 2017, highlight the divisiveness the use of the Confederate battle flag has had on our society.”
Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, both former Army officers, also put out word through their spokesmen that they are “open to a bipartisan discussion” of renaming Army bases such as North Carolina’s Fort Bragg that honor Confederate leaders who led the fight against the Union and directly or implicitly defended the institution of slavery.
Ten major Army installations are named for Confederate Army officers, mostly senior generals, including Robert E. Lee. Among the 10 is Fort Benning, the namesake of Confederate Army Gen. Henry L. Benning, who was a leader of Georgia’s secessionist movement and an advocate of preserving slavery. Others are in Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Texas and Louisiana. The naming was done mostly after World War I and in the 1940s, in some cases as gestures of conciliation to the South.
Few voices in the military are openly defending the link to Confederate symbols, but some of the bases named for Confederate officers are legendary in their own right. Fort Bragg, for example, is home to some of the Army’s most elite forces. Any decision to change the name at Bragg or other bases likely would involve consulting with officials from the affected states and localities.