BY KEVIN DUGGAN
As demonstrations in support
of the Black Lives Matter
movement continue around
the world, a group of Brooklyn
politicians are calling for the
renaming of two streets inside
the Fort Hamilton Army Base
currently named after Confederate
generals.
Bay Ridge Representative
Max Rose — an Army veteran
— and his Flatbush colleague
Congresswoman Yvette
Clarke demanded June 11
that the military rename General
Lee Avenue and Stonewall
Jackson Drive inside the
southern Brooklyn base after
Black Americans instead.
“American history provides
a proud litany of African
American heroes, including
many brave Brooklynites,
who fought in the service of
our country to uphold the core
principle of democracy: that
all men are created equal,”
reads a June 11 letter by the
federal politicians to US Secretary
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of Defense Mark Esper.
“US military bases and
property should be named after
men and women who’ve
served our nation with honor
and distinction, not sought to
tear it apart to uphold white
supremacy.”
Robert E. Lee, the commander
of the Confederate
States Army during the Civil
War, was stationed at the Brooklyn
Army base as a military
engineer before the confl ict in
the 1840s. Thomas Jonathan
“Stonewall” Jackson, a Confederate
lieutenant general, also
served at Fort Hamilton.
Amid controversy surrounding
many Confederate
monuments around the country,
the Army’s Secretary
Ryan McCarthy reportedly
said through a spokesperson
he was “open” to renaming
bases and facilities named after
leaders for the Civil War
secessionists, citing the recent
killing of George Floyd
by a Minneapolis police offi -
cer as changing his mind, after
he had previously declined
to change the names.
But President Donald
Trump fi red back on social
media saying he would not
allow the bases to be rechristened
because they had become
part of the country’s
heritage and that they were
“hallowed ground.”
The Brooklyn representatives
called out Trump, saying
that the southern generals
who fought to secede from the
Union and maintain slavery
should not be honored.
Mayor Bill de Blasio joined
in the chorus calling for the
street name changes.
“The notion of the man
who used military might to
try to protect enslavement,
that we would in anywhere in
this country and in our armed
forces, our national government
would in any way, elevate
and respect a man who
fought to protect slavery and
harm fellow human beings,
his name should be taken off
everything in America, period,”
de Blasio said at his
daily press briefi ng Thursday.
A spokesman for the Department
of Defense noted
that Trump’s tweet only referenced
Army Base names,
not street names within the facilities,
but referred a request
for further comment to the
Army’s press offi ce, which did
not respond by press time.
Clarke and other lawmakers,
including Borough
President Eric Adams and
Councilman Justin Brannan,
previously called for the
Army to rename General Lee
Avenue, but the soldiers rejected
them, most recently in
2017, saying the roads honor
fi ghters who were “an inextricable
part of our military history,”
the Daily News reported
at the time.
Brannan also renewed his
call to rename the streets.
“The time has come to rename
these streets,” the Bay
Ridge pol tweeted. “It is long
overdue.”
The Fort Hamitlon Armyy Base has streets named after Robert E. Lee and
Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. Wikimedia Commons
Name game
Brooklyn pols call for
renaming of Ft. Ham streets
memorializing Confederates
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