As we honor the men and women who served our nation, we must remember the changes made during the Biden administration to correct past discrimination and what the future might hold during the current one.
In 2021, World War I’s all-Black 369th Infantry Regiment, the Harlem Hellfighters, was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. In 2022, the all-Black 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, whose mail-sorting efforts in the final months of World War II gave a needed boost to American troop morale, was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.
In 2022, the Army posthumously promoted Col. Charles Young, West Point’s third Black graduate, to the rank of brigadier general. In 1917 when America entered World War I, the Army forced Young into early retirement on specious medical grounds to ensure he wouldn’t receive an automatic promotion resulting from the massive influx of troops. Young’s promotion came too late, but at least the Army recognized its error.
In 2023, the Navy renamed the USS Chancellorsville, the USS Robert Smalls. Chancellorsville was an 1863 Civil War battle won by Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army. Robert Smalls was an enslaved ship’s pilot, who stole a Confederate ship, containing valuable military cargo, and successfully surrendered it to the U.S. Navy. Smalls later served nearly 10 years as a congressman.
In 2023, military installations, which had been named for Confederate generals, were renamed for Americans who fought for their country, not against it. Fort Lee was renamed Fort Gregg-Adams. Lt. Gen. Arthur Gregg, a logistics expert, was the first Black Army lieutenant general. Lt. Col. Charity Adams was the leader of World War II’s 6888th Central Postal Battalion and the highest-ranking Black WAC officer.
Fort Polk, named for Confederate Gen. Leonidas Polk, was renamed for William Henry Johnson, who served in the famed 369th Infantry Regiment, and was among the first American heroes of WWI and the first Black one. In 2015, Johnson was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.
In 1940, 15 Black sailors sent a letter to The Pittsburgh Courier, a national Black newspaper, discouraging African-Americans from enlisting in the Navy. They wrote, “All they would become is seagoing bellhops, chambermaids and dishwashers.” Despite the truth of their statement and the exercise of their First Amendment rights, they were given “bad conduct” or “undesirable” discharges. In 2023, the Navy changed their discharges to “honorable.”
In 2023, the Army set aside the convictions of 110 Black soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, who were convicted for rioting in Houston during World War I. The Army Board for Correction of Military Records “found that these soldiers were wrongly treated because of their race and were not given fair trials.” Nineteen soldiers were executed and the rest served prison terms as long as 20 years. The soldiers’ military records were changed to read “honorable.”
In 2024, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro exonerated 256 sailors from all charges relating to the Port Chicago Mutiny of August 1944. On July 17, 1944, two Liberty Ships, which Black sailors had been loading with munitions, exploded and 320 men died and more than 500 were injured. Prior to and even after the explosion, the Navy refused to implement safety training for the proper handling of dangerous munitions. When called upon to load another munitions ship, the sailors initially balked. For that act, the Navy disciplined 208 sailors and convicted 50 others of mutiny.
In 2024, the Army posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross to Sgt. Waverly B. Woodson Jr. Woodson, a Black medic serving on Omaha Beach on D-Day, had only received a Bronze Star for his bravery. In the early 1990s, he had been on a short list for consideration of the Medal of Honor, but his service records were destroyed in the massive 1973 National Personnel Records Center fire.
True progress was finally here with the Army and Navy publicly acknowledging their past discrimination. Dr. King’s axiom had meaning. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Sadly in 2025, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth restored Confederate surnames to Army forts. Hegseth, who must have grown up watching reruns of “The Dukes of Hazzard” — whose heroes drove a car named the General Lee emblazoned with a large Confederate flag — has ordered the restoration of the Confederate Memorial to its former location. No explanatory signage explaining America’s complicated past will be posted nearby. American history books are in danger of being rewritten yet again leaving school children with the impression that the South won the Civil War.
On this Veterans Day, a special thank you to those men and women who not only had to fight our enemies abroad but discrimination at home.
Newman is an amateur historian of African-American history. He’s working on a miniseries docudrama on the African-American civil rights movement of the first half of the 20th century.
