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...Those new designations are set to be mostly wrapped up in the summer with Fort Pickett, Virginia, being renamed Fort Barfoot on Friday and most other posts set to have name changes by early June.
The new names are part of a larger effort by the Pentagon to scrub references to Confederate military leaders and commemoration of rebel victories. The congressionally mandated Naming Commission, a committee formed to examine all Confederate references across the military, recommended nine Army bases for redesignation.
Those bases were founded long after the Civil War, between the early- and mid-twentieth century -- an era in which the bulk of Confederate monuments were erected as Southern states enacted laws disenfranchising Black Americans.
The next redesignation will be Fort Rucker, Alabama, home of the Army's aviation training, on April 20. The base will be renamed after Chief Warrant Officer 4 Michael Novosel Sr., a veteran of World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars. He was awarded the Medal of Honor in Vietnam after he flew his helicopter into heavy gunfire during 15 medical evacuations in a single battle, saving 29 soldiers. His helicopter was heavily damaged, and he was also shot while flying.
On April 27, Fort Lee, Virginia, will be redesignated Fort Gregg-Adams, a name that references two trailblazing Black officers: Lt. Gen. Arthur Gregg, the first Black soldier to rise to three-star general in the logistics field; and Lt. Col. Charity Adams, the first Black officer in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, the component of the Army where women served when units were still segregated by gender. Gregg, 94, would be the only living person to have an Army post named after him.
On May 11...
