Among all the bad (disgusting? immoral? illegal?) news that comes out of the Trump regime's Department of Defense, you may have heard about the U.S. removing a display honoring Black soldiers in the Netherlands American Cemetery... at least that has gotten some coverage.
Less has been said about the renaming of U.S. military bases to once again name Confederate military leaders, usually with a sneering wink that the renaming is in honor of someone else who happens to have the same last name.
Today's post by the Equal Justice Initiative is such an example, and most likely one you won't read about, unless you happen to be in Louisiana.
Near the western border of the state, about halfway between the Gulf Coast and Shreveport, is a fort that was called Fort Polk until 2023, when it was renamed Fort Johnson, after Congress outlawed naming military installations for Confederates.
Johnson was "a Black World War I soldier who was wounded 21 times, suffering a permanent foot injury that would leave him with limited mobility, as he single-handedly drove back a German raiding party in France in 1918."
Leonidas Polk, on the other hand, was not only completely incompetent as a military leader: he should have had R for a middle initial because he was a reprehensible racist through and through. And he was an Episcopal bishop, to boot. (I've read a lot of EJI's daily write-ups, and this may be the longest one.)
The fort has now been named back to Fort Polk, supposedly to honor a different General Polk, who served in World War II, but everyone knows why it was renamed.
Johnson's name, to add insult to injury, "has been relegated to Fort Polk’s exchange, where service members go for haircuts and fast food."
The title of the EJI post is "The U.S. Project to Dishonor Black Americans in 2025."
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