'A Slap in the Face': Black Veterans on Bases Named for Confederates
WASHINGTON — When Timothy Berry was recruiting black students for West Point, where he served as class president in 2013, he often reflected on his senior year, when he lived in the Robert E. Lee barracks. It bothered him then; it bothers him now.
“I was trying to tell black and brown students that they would have a home there,” said Berry, who served as an Army captain with the 101st Airborne Division from 2013 to 2018. “It sent a very strong mixed message.”
For many black service members, who make up about 17% of all active-duty military personnel, the Pentagon’s decision to consider renaming Army bases bearing the names of Confederate officers seems excruciatingly overdue. Generations of black service members signed up for the military to defend the values of their country, only to be assigned to bases named after people who represent its grimmest hour.
“It is really kind of a slap in the face to those African American soldiers who are on bases named after generals who fought for their cause,” said Jerry Green, a retired noncommissioned officer who trained at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, which is named for a Confederate general, Braxton Bragg. “That cause was slavery.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/slap-face-black-veterans-bases-122038527.html
