Native Son Says Fort Benning Needs a Name Change

How about Fort Tubman to honor a real hero?

As a native of Fort Benning, I feel I should have some say in the controversy surrounding the renaming of the U.S. Army base that sits in the southwest corner of Georgia.

True, I didn’t live there long — maybe six months — but I’m the naive one who has unknowingly for decades had to list as my birthplace on hundreds of documents including my passport this Army base dedicated to a Confederate States Army general, an American traitor, and a white supremacist named Henry L. Benning.

I’m stunned that I have lived over a half a century and only until a few weeks ago did I find out that my birthplace was named after one of the leaders of losers in the Civil War. WTF?! Seriously, America? Why don’t we just start naming federal government buildings in Oklahoma after Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols?

Yup, Fort Benning, at the bequest of the Columbus, GA Rotary Club in 1918 (50+ years after losing the Civil War), was named to honor the Georgia town’s native son, Henry L. Benning, who said before the war between the states that “separation from the union was the only way to preserve slavery.”