“the South. Mike Jason, a retired Army colonel who commanded troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, told me the region had lots of cheap land, which is why the Army in the early 1900s built bases and other facilities there. As a way to appease racist white political leaders and locals who didn’t want a more integrated military nearby, the Army named bases after Confederate “heroes” who were popular among these leaders and locals.
That’s why all 10 facilities named after those men are in the South: three in Virginia, two in Louisiana, two in Georgia, and one each in Alabama, North Carolina, and Texas.
And the Confederate officers the Army chose to name the bases after weren’t just selected at random or because of their military prowess during the Civil War. Most were specifically chosen because of their local ties. For example, Gen. Robert E. Lee and Maj. Gen. George Pickett, both Virginians, have bases named after them in the state.”
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“Experts have offered three main explanations — some more convincing than others — for why those 10 facilities haven’t had their names changed: 1) the pervasiveness of the Lost Cause myth in Army culture, 2) bureaucratic inertia and competing problems, and 3) courting controversy.”
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“Retired Army Gen. David Petraeus, one of the service’s most celebrated leaders before an ignominious fall, wrote an op-ed in the Atlantic on Tuesday describing how Confederate culture has persisted in the Army.
“When I was a cadet at West Point in the early 1970s, enthusiasm for Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson was widespread,” Petraeus wrote. “We were not encouraged to think deeply about the cause for which they had fought, at least not in our military history classes. And throughout my Army career, I likewise encountered enthusiastic adherents of various Confederate commanders, and a special veneration for Lee.””
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“Perhaps that inaction had to do with the final explanation, which is one the Army has repeatedly used: that changing the names would stir up immense controversy within the ranks. Take, for instance, the response to a request from Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) in 2017. She asked the Army to rename two streets at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn: General Lee Avenue and Stonewall Jackson Drive.
When the Army wrote back, Diana Randon, who was at the time the service’s top official on these issues, said the two men were “an inextricable part of our military history.” Such a move would be “controversial and divisive,” she continued, and “contrary to the Nation’s original intent in naming these streets, which was the spirit of reconciliation.”
Of course, as discussed above, that is a blatant misrepresentation of why these individuals’ names were chosen. They were deliberately chosen to appease racist people, particularly in the South — not to achieve some kind of national “reconciliation.””
https://www.vox.com/2020/6/9/21285097/army-base-name-change-confederacy-marines-navy