The Case for Renaming the USS John C. Stennis
By Lieutenant Commander Reuben Keith Green, U.S. Navy (Retired)
June 2020
While the debate about renaming military bases named for Confederates rages throughout the land, the West Wing, the Pentagon, and in the halls of Congress, I want to bring the discussion closer to the waterfront. Since the military and defense leaders seem to be amenable to hearing what the “dark-blue†and “dark-green†soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines have to say, and since most of them are not in a position to speak frankly, I thought I would make an attempt. This will be an uncomfortable conversation—one I only committed to writing on after a good deal of research—and I ask readers to conduct their own research before weighing in or dismissing the idea out of hand.
If South Carolina Senator Strom Thurman and Alabama Governor George Wallace were the face and voice of the Southern Dixiecrats, then Mississippi Senator John C. Stennis was the heart, soul, and brains of the white supremacist caucus in the 1948 Congress. The Dixiecrats were the faction of the 1940s Democratic Party that consisted of malcontented southern delegates who protested the civil rights plank in the party platform, and President Harry S. Truman’s advocacy of that plank. The blinding of Army Sergeant Isaac Woodard Jr. by a South Carolina policeman in 1946 strengthened Truman’s resolve.
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2020/june/case-renaming-uss-john-c-stennis
