US Navy needs to rename warships honoring racists or celebrating the Confederacy, service task force says

• An official US Navy task force called on the service to rename warships honoring the Confederacy.
• The USS Chancellorsville, for example, is named after a Civil War battle and Confederate victory.
• The One Navy Task Force was founded last year to combat racial inequality and injustice in the Navy.

The US Navy needs to rename ships and and facilities that honor the Confederacy they once fought, a new service task force said in a report released Wednesday. The recommendations suggest the service might need to find new names for at least one aircraft carrier honoring a segregationist and a cruiser named for a Confederate victory.

Launched after the racial justice protests last summer, the official Task Force One Navy recommended that the Navy "initiate systemic review to identify and rename Navy assets in need of modernization consistent with Navy core values."

The service should look at renaming assets "honoring those associated with the Confederacy," as well as those that are "named after racist, derogatory or culturally insensitive persons, events, or language," the report says.

The 141-page task force report, which included dozens of suggestions for combating racism and promoting inclusion, said that while "renaming recommendations and decisions should be consistent with current naming authorities, policies and practices," the Navy should "focus on honoring persons of historically underrepresented demographics, racial minorities, women, and enlisted members."

Military.com first reported the recommendation in the report, which was published in full by USNI News.

The task force report noted that some ship names have been connected with "confederate or white supremacist ideologies."

The report did not identify any specific vessels that need to be renamed, but two ships that have been highlighted in the media and elsewhere include the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis, a US senator and segregationist who fought against racial equality, and the cruiser USS Chancellorsville, named after a major victory for the Confederacy.

Other potentially problematic Navy ship names include those of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, which is named after another southern lawmaker and segregationist, and the oceanographic survey ship USNS Maury, a vessel named after a man who left the US Navy to fight with the Confederacy.

Commenting on the Stennis, retired Lt. Cmdr. Reuben Keith Green wrote in a US Naval Institute magazine article last year that the Navy should "formally reconsider whether it is appropriate for a capital ship to bear the name of an avowed, lifelong white supremacist."

Task Force One Navy was established last June following the nationwide unrest over the death of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed in police custody. His death and the protests that followed led the US military to take a hard look at issues like racism and injustice.

"As a Navy - uniform and civilian, active and reserve - we cannot tolerate discrimination or racism of any kind. We must work to identify and eliminate individual and systemic racism within our force," Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday said when the task force was established.

The task force, he said, was created to "identify and remove racial barriers and improve inclusion within our Navy."

The US military has taken some recent steps to root out the Confederate legacy. Last July, for example, the Pentagon effectively banned the display of the Confederate flag on military bases.

"The flags we fly," then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said, "must accord with the military imperatives of good order and discipline, treating all our people with dignity and respect, and rejecting divisive symbols."

US Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said prior to the move that the military needed to "take a hard look at the symbology, the symbols, things like the Confederate flags and statues and bases."

On base names, the general told Congress that when he was a young officer at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, he had a staff sergeant tell him "he went to work every day at a base that represented a guy who enslaved his grandparents."

In his discussion with lawmakers, Milley condemned the Confederacy as "an act of treason at the time against the Union, against the Stars and Stripes, against the US Constitution." He added that the Confederate officers "turned their back on their oath."

In January, Congress overturned then-President Donald Trump's veto to pass the fiscal year 2021 defense bill, which included a provision for renaming military bases honoring Confederate leaders.