In its newest transfer to undo variety efforts, the Military introduced this week that it had discovered methods to revive the names of seven installations that lengthy honored Accomplice heroes.
However within the case of Fort Lee in Prince George County, Va., the Pentagon did it with a curious twist.
Reasonably than restore the identify of Gen. Robert E. Lee, the Accomplice commander who defended slavery, the Military discovered Pvt. Fitz Lee, who was Black and fought within the Spanish-American Struggle.
Personal Lee, who had kidney illness, died in 1899 inside months of being awarded a Medal of Honor.
The Military introduced the plans for Fort Lee in a list of the seven installations it meant to quickly rebrand. The transfer would cancel modifications adopted throughout the Biden administration on the advice of a commission created by Congress to seek out worthy replacements for base names with ties to the Confederacy.
The bottom was named for Normal Lee from 1917 till 2023. However for the previous two years, it was named Fort Gregg-Adams for Lt. Gen. Arthur J. Gregg, the primary Black man to achieve the rank of an Military three-star common, and Lt. Col. Charity Adams Earley, the highest-ranking Black lady to function an Military officer in World Struggle II.
The renaming effort is simply the latest by President Trump and Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth to dismantle their predecessors’ variety inclusion measures. In March, the administration stopped calling the massive navy base in North Carolina “Fort Liberty,” reverting it to its previous name, Fort Bragg. “We’re not fascinated with your woke rubbish or your political correctness,” Mr. Hegseth stated in a speech there on Tuesday, to the cheers of an viewers of troopers in battle costume uniforms and pink berets.
Like Normal Robert E., Personal Fitz was born in Virginia. He was one among 4 Buffalo Troopers who obtained a Medal of Honor for valor on June 30, 1898, midway into the battle with Spain in Cuba.
They went ashore from the usS. Florida, a steamer, to rescue wounded Cuban and American troopers from a seashore close to Tunas de Zaza, after a dropping skirmish with Spanish forces. “This after a number of earlier makes an attempt at rescue had been annoyed,” stated their Medal of Honor quotation, recounting their valor after what American historians have known as the Battle of Tayabacoa.
