Brooklyn Congressional Reps Demand that 2 Streets Recently Named for Pro-Slavery Confederate Generals be Changed

From [HERE] Stonewall Jackson Drive and General Lee Avenue are on the Fort Hamilton military base near Bay Ridge in Brooklyn. The street names honor pro-slavery Confederate Army Generals. Jackson and Lee both were stationed at the base in the 1840s prior to the Civil War. They also both violated the 1789 military oath of allegiance to “support the constitution of the United States” and to serve “honestly and faithfully” against “enemies or opposers.”

Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson graduated from West Point and served in the U.S Army during the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). He later took up arms against the United States during the Civil War, leading Confederate forces at the battles of Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. He died of complications from wounds in 1863. Not only was Jackson a traitor, he was also a slaveholder.

Robert E. Lee was also a West Point graduate and a veteran of the Mexican-American War. He later served as superintendent of the military academy and Lincoln offered him command of the U.S. army at the outbreak of the Civil War. Lee refused the offer and instead became commander of the army of Northern Virginia and later the Confederate General-in-Chief, leading Southern forces at Antietam and Gettysburg. At the end of the Civil War, Lee, a traitor and a former slaveholder, opposed granting Blacks the right to vote. Recently his statue was removed from prominent display in New Orleans.

Brooklyn Congressional Representatives Yvette Clarke, Jerrold Nadler, Nydia Velazquez and Hakeem Jeffries are demanding that the names of these streets be changed. In a letter to Army Secretary Robert Speer they wrote “To honor these men who believed in the ideology of white supremacy and fought to maintain the institution of slavery constitutes a grievous insult to the many thousands of people in Brooklyn who are descendants of the slaves held in bondage.” [MORE]