Fort Benning in Georgia is named for Henry Benning who said abolition would lead to black governors, juries, legislatures and more. (Photo by John D. Helms via Flickr Creative Commons.)
It’s sobering Memorial Day reading to find out 10 U.S. military bases are named for Confederate generals “who led soldiers who fought and killed United States Army soldiers; indeed, who may have killed such soldiers themselves.”
Startlingly different than the usual observations about “ultimate sacrifice” and “fighting for freedom.”
While, absolutely, it would be ideal to change the names of Fort Hood, Fort Lee, Fort Benning, etc., of course that will never happen. It’s one thing for a New York Times contributor to demand the change, quite another for a public official to step into that quagmire.
It would be like the controversies over changing the Ole Miss mascot, lowering Confederate battle flags from state capitals, or the Brad Paisley song with LL Cool J, multiplied by thousands. While name changes would be the right thing to do, what legislator would think it was personally or politically worth it?
Instead, we’ll have to live with the duality of who these generals were and what the bases named after them mean to us now.
Southerners of certain persuasions understand that kind of duality, I think, because we were raised to love our home states and our region before we learned about what the Civil War was fought for, or why Confederate battle flags were raised over state capitals in the 1950s, and what our states did to its black citizens under Jim Crow and how fiercely our states resisted civil rights for their black citizens.
As a young person, I vividly remember trying to reconcile my deep connection to Alabama and the South with the then-new knowledge of all those flaws. I’m sure people come to different conclusions, but one might be this: Knowing the failings increases understanding, which allows the love to deepen.
Chapel Hillbilly 