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I am Jim Fossone.
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We want to welcome back to Veterans Radio a couple of Navy gentlemen.
I'll use that term loosely because they're officer types that have spoken to us on different
subjects in the past and are willing to talk to us again.
So right there, hey, first we've got Captain John B. Cordell.
John, welcome back to Veterans Radio.
Hey, thank you very much, John.
Thanks for having me.
I really appreciate it.
And we also have Lieutenant Commander Reuben Keith Green, both gentlemen retired.
Keith, welcome back to Veterans Radio.
Jim, thank you for having us, and it's a pleasure.
Well, as I say, officers and gentlemen here, according to Congress.
But we've got a very serious subject to talk about today, and both of you have been thinking
and writing and talking about this for a number of years, but recently had an article, The
Tragedy of the Lost Generation, in a US&I proceedings in August of 2024.
It's volume 150, slash 8, slash 1458, for those keeping score at home.
That sort of focuses on the whole issue of renaming, the Navy renaming ships, and in
particular why it hasn't yet renamed the USS John Stennis.
Keith, why don't you start with this, tell us what the Stennis is.
Well, the USS John Stennis is an aircraft carrier named for Mississippi Senator John
Stennis, who is an arch segregationist, racist.
He's considered the father of the modern Navy, but the Navy's biography leaves out all of
his anti-civil rights and racist behaviors that he perpetrated for his entire adult life.
And the Stennis has been, when did it get put into service?
I believe it was 92, don't quote me on that.
Reagan nominated Stennis as the, I think it was 95, but Reagan nominated the ship in 1989
just before he left office and shorted the course, Stennis retired.
And this is an aircraft carrier for those non-naval types who are listening in here
on Veterans Radio.
We're talking to Lieutenant Commander Keith Green and Captain John Cordell.
Keith, explain to folks how big an aircraft carrier is and how many people are on it when
it's active.
Well, I'm going to pass that to John since Keith's actually a nuclear surface engineer
who has some time on that platform.
Oh, thanks, Keith.
So I have a surface nuke officer.
So I've served on actually pre-commissioned two carriers, the Harry Truman and the George
Bush.
And we'll come back to the names and why they matter.
But aircraft carrier is, sorry, that was me.
So aircraft carrier, Jim, is basically the largest ship in the world.
It's a thousand feet long, roughly like three football fields.
It carries about 75 aircraft of different types from jets to helicopters to vertical
takeoff.
And it has a core crew of about 3,000 and it adds about 1,500 of aviation folks and
others.
It's a carrier around nuclear power with about 4,000 to 5,000 sailors on board.
Yeah, that's what I wanted to get across is how big it is and how many men and women are
living on it when it's out cruising around the world.
It is currently, as I understand it, being retrofitted, updated.
And when it gets done with that, it'll have another life of what, 25 or 30 years in the
fleet?
Yep, that's exactly right.
The nuclear plants of those ships are good for about 25 years.
And so typically, because refueling takes about three to five years, there's only time
for one.
And so they last about 50 years total.
Yeah, so the issue of the name on this ship isn't something that's going to go away tomorrow.
It's going to be the name of this ship's going to continue to live on for another couple
of two to three decades.
So it's worth talking about the name Stennis, who he was.
But let's put this in a little context, too.
The military, DOD, the Navy has gone through in the last few years looking at its bases,
its ships, its buildings, its monuments, all of those things that were named after Confederate
generals primarily, and said, you know what, that's not right anymore.
That's not the image we want anymore.
And the Navy did do some of that work over the last couple of years, didn't it, John?
They did.
Yes, the Naming Commission was put together with some retired admirals, and they looked
at that.
And now, you know, Keith may know better than I do, but a couple things about that commission,
they were very much focused on, you know, the Confederacy.
So it was battles like Chancellorsville and memorializing, you know, the rebel forces
of the Confederacy that they wanted to get at.
And so, you know, the Stennis was sort of at one level outside of that bubble.
But when you start to look at it, you know, we could talk more about this, but, you know,
one of his legacies was that he was very much a supporter of many of the things that the
Confederacy stood for.
And I think, you know, the record will show that he was pretty dedicated to making sure
that those types of things lived on, segregation being the large one.
Well that's why you sort of have to set this up to understand this discussion of the need
to change the name with, hey, we've just gone through this for this limited period of the
Confederacy.
And according to an article by Steve Walsh, the Navy renamed something like 33 ships,
buildings, and streets as a result of that commission work.
And so that does kind of set up like, okay, we recognize this is a problem and we're changing
it.
So now let's talk about Stennis, which is, you say, is just outside the bubble, but really
pretty associated with it.
I'll throw it to either of you to talk about who this Senator was that, you know, died
many years ago and many of us won't even remember him when he was alive, but talk about his
legacy.
Okay, I'll take that.
I first learned who John Stennis was when I read Admiral Zumwalt's memoir on watch in
1976.
I was an 18 year old, 19 year old seaman, and he had three chapters and one of the chapters
in his book was sailing second class.
And John C Stennis is the man who ordered the Navy's subcommittee hearings on permissiveness
in the Navy after the so-called race riots in the 1970s, early 72, 73.
And he stacked it with Louisiana Congressman Eddie Hebert, who was also a signer of the
Southern Manifesto.
And he was adamant that Zumwalt was being too permissive and not punishing those black
sailors.
When the truth eventually came out 50 years later, those black solar sailors had been
victims of racial discrimination for years, including during the court martial process.
So Stennis has been on my radar for a long time.
I was busy being a chief engineer when Reagan made the announcement of the ship and I had
bigger problems to worry about than what the next aircraft carrier's name was going to
be.
But as I started working on writing my first memoir, Black Officer, White Navy, I dug back
into who Stennis was and the more I learned, the more appalled I got.
And then when John read my first book, he picked up on that.
And since then, we've been writing articles and trying to get the Navy to change the name
of this ship because John Stennis was born in 1901.
He was 18 years old when the Navy banned the enlistment of black sailors.
President Woodrow Wilson and Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels were in total, Stennis
would have been in total agreement with their efforts to curtail any opportunities for black
sailors, including banning the first enlistment of black sailors.
So Stennis knew men, knew and venerated men who had served in the Confederacy.
He was young enough to have known grown men that actually fought in the Confederacy.
But he's the biggest booster of the Confederacy in modern time.
And to have a ship sailing around named for a man who did so much damage and continues
to do so much damage, it's really to me, it's a moral injury, it's psychological abuse
to send thousands and thousands of black and other diverse sailors to be served on a ship
named for somebody like that.
Well let's be clear about this.
The historical record is clear.
This isn't your opinion, Keith, about Stennis' views on race relations.
He's got all kinds of documents that he's put his name to that are in archives all over
the place, which makes it clear.
For example, I read in the Tragedy of the Lost Generation that when President Harry
Truman integrated the armed forces in 1948 by executive orders, Stennis, he didn't like
it.
He told everybody he didn't like it, didn't he, Captain?
Right.
And going even further, so to your point, a lot of times I start with Wikipedia.
And so I hit Wikipedia for Stennis and the first thing that pops up is Senator, Father
of the Modern Navy.
Then you kind of flip to page two and that's where the article about his segregationist
policies goes in.
He voted against the Civil Rights Act, he voted against Martin Luther King's birthday,
he voted against the Voting Act.
So his goal was to keep people separate based on race, which is the definition of segregation.
And then when you click on segregation, it leads you right to the definition of racism.
And so in that Wikipedia, it talks about how in his young life as a prosecutor, he prosecuted
I believe it was four black men who had a confession to murder, or made them murder,
basically beaten out of them.
And it even describes in pretty graphic detail being simulated hangings, being thrashed with
belts, and all this was on the record of the trial that he led the prosecution of these
people that was eventually overturned by the Supreme Court.
So that was pretty clear.
And then you follow his political career.
And then based on Keith's sort of clues, I went back to the University of Mississippi
has an entire dossier on him.
And that's where I found the letter that was it was printed in the magazine of, hey, I
agree with the letter.
What the letter said was, I agree with you, the boys should serve in all white units.
Stennis was pretty savvy.
He didn't put the racial epithets and the controversial language in his replies to letters.
He let the letters stand and endorsed them.
And so if I couldn't print that letter because of the words used in it to describe black
people, Jews and Italians and others, but suffice it to say that what he would in that
letter address Truman's mongrelization of the armed forces.
And the problem that he was fighting against was the problem of black soldiers and black
sailors.
And that's what Stennis was agreeing with in that letter.
Yeah, he's responding to a constituent and saying, I agree with you 100%.
Right.
And in my years of service here, I have constantly and continually stressed the very point you
mentioned that our boys should have the chance to serve in all white units.
And this is 1955 when he's writing to the constituents.
Right.
I'm sorry, Keith.
No, go ahead, John.
So the next thing that, and this was a complete coincidence, as a Naval Academy graduate,
I get this quarterly magazine called Shipmate.
And I happened to know Admiral Stravidis referred with him in the past and he was a distinguished
graduate and so they have a little biography and then they had five of them.
And one of them was Brigadier General retired Leo Williams, the third Marine.
And buried in his bio was a quote that said, everybody knew that a man of my color could
never get a nomination from a Southern state.
So I had to move to get to the Naval Academy.
And between him and Keith, I found a book called Blue, Gold and Black, talking about
the integration of the Naval Academy.
And I reached out to the author who was in touch with the general, who pretty much confirmed
what we had sort of inferred from that document is that there was a movement, a handshake
amongst the Southern congressmen and senators.
And the nomination process to the Naval Academy is very, it's run by politicians.
And so without writing anything down, they were able to have a handshake to make sure
that no black candidates got through that process for decades.
And so that really to me was like the next piece of, the next layer to peel back of wow,
not only did he have beliefs, but as Keith talks about, my beliefs drive my actions,
he had tangible actions that he took to prevent black Americans from serving their country.
So let's go to, I said it a minute ago, I don't think there's really any question about
his segregationist and racist beliefs.
So let's go to what's the impediment for the Navy to change the name?
Who's got to make that decision?
Why hasn't that decision been made?
You guys have been talking and writing on this for years.
What feedback do you get from the Naval community?
Okay, Keith, quit laughing, Keith, and answer the question.
Well, that was John laughing.
I was grinning my teeth.
So far the Navy, when my first article came out, the case for renaming the USS John C.
Stennis, there was a flurry of activity in the press, people questioning this and so
forth.
And when the Navy was asked about it, they said they had no comment at this time.
And they forwarded that article to the Congress, the Congressional Research Service, the Navy
forwarded that saying that people were talking about the need for renaming the ship.
But from that day to this, there's been no official comment.
The Secretary of the Navy can make that change with a stroke of a pen, as far as I understand.
And they don't have to appropriate any money.
They can get money out of the couch cushions to do that.
But it's a lot of pushback.
I suspect that there's been no public discussions about it.
So I don't really know what's going to happen.
So how in the world has there not been a congressional hearing on this issue?
John, did you get different pushback or different feedback from the naval community on this?
So I have a lot of retired and active duty friends that are pretty high up in the Navy.
And the sort of feedback I get is, hey, there's bigger fish to fry.
This is not that important.
We have other things to worry about.
Number two, most of them just don't know.
That's what I get a lot of.
And back to your point, we talked about that before we started recording the moveon.org.
When you ask a sailor about John C. Stennis, most of them say, oh, he's the father of the
Navy.
There's a carrier name after him.
They haven't turned to page two of Wikipedia to find out.
And that applies to seaman and it applies to flag officers.
What prompted me to write this article with Keith and to collaborate with Keith and write
this article was two sailors that approached us on the John C. Stennis who are stationed
there after we spoke at one of the, I think it was ANZO, American Naval Service Officers
Symposium.
They said, you know, we talk about this a lot, but basically what we're told is it's
not your issue.
Right.
And then we put the article, we have black sailors who felt like it was a slap in the
face when they walked across the border deck.
A black pilot who said it was a gut punch to land on the carrier.
And so they're active duty sailors.
But you know, one of my favorite quotes in a different context was a young chief said,
you know, it's when the organization you work for is discriminating against you, it's not
in your best interest to point that out.
And one of the things I've learned in my 40 years, especially with the Navy is when you're
at the top of the Navy or the top of leadership positions, you have the option to do nothing
and say nothing.
And eventually most things will just go away.
And so that it seems to be the option that's being taken.
Well the problem I have with the do nothing is something like 17% of the Navy are African
Americans.
You know, it is a slap in the face.
And we as veterans want to be proud of our service.
Right.
And you know, you can go into any store or down any street, any parade, and you're going
to see guys wearing, gals wearing ball caps and t-shirts with the name of the vessel.
They served on or the airborne unit they were with what have you.
I mean you're not wearing the John C. Stennis cap out in public, is it?
We had sailors tell us they refused to wear it out in public.
They won't wear the shirt home.
But you mentioned the number, 17%.
You know what the percent of black Naval Academy midshipmen is?
I don't.
Six.
So we're going to get to that issue in a minute.
I want to talk about that.
But I want to go back to how does the general public, you guys are busy educating the Naval
community that this isn't right.
You got to know the history of this man.
And when you do, you won't want the ship named for him or continue to be named for him.
How do you get the general public involved telling the secretary of the Navy, hey, don't
be silent.
Now's the time to do something.
Well I have an opinion on that.
I don't think the Navy gives a hoot what the general public thinks about that.
What they care about is what Congress is interested in.
And if you can get Congress interested in this topic, they will.
The Navy has ignored the general public and the press, but they will not ignore an inquiry
from Congress on why you stepped over an alligator to kill two frogs by renaming ships of people
that have been long dead.
And Stennis was alive when I was fighting discrimination as an officer in the Navy.
And there are going to be many thousands of minority sailors and white sailors that will
serve on that ship in the next 25 years.
And the longer the Navy delays this, the longer the more contentious the issue is going to
be.
And it's up to Congress to step in and protect the people that volunteer to serve in our
military from this sort of moral abuse.
Keith, is there a particular congressman or woman who is maybe near and dear to this issue?
Is there somebody or some committee in general that needs to hear from people about this
matters?
Well, Mississippi Senator Benny Thompson would be the obvious choice to spearhead this thing.
And not only that, the Congressional Black Caucus, there was a huge outcry when the young
airman was killed in his apartment.
There was a huge outcry and you had these prominent people attending his funeral, but
not one word from these people about sailors that are experiencing this sort of, I call
it discrimination and psychological abuse on an everyday basis.
So you need to get, I think Benny Thompson has the moral authority to address this issue.
Well, we want to-
And one thing that Keith and I are working on now that these letters are out there and
these articles is a bit of a letter writing campaign to some key congressmen and senators,
other Navy leadership and things like that, that might educate them.
Because like I said, the average person just doesn't know.
And then when you confront them with it, it's kind of like if you took a poll, there's a
good chunk of the country that feels like that racism is not an issue.
And so it's tough to even bring a topic like this up.
And back to my point about the 6% of the Naval Academy, remember you don't grow avarles that
weren't incense.
And so if you start at 6%, look at the percentage of black flag officers.
I think it's down in like the one or two.
And one of our mentors had a comment that says, for something to change, there has to
be empathy from the unimpacted.
And if I'm a white senior person, this doesn't impact me.
And for me to feel compelled to make a change, I have to really inject empathy into that
18-year-old black sailor.
And I don't have a lot of evidence of that happening.
Well, we had talked earlier too about whether or not there was a change.org petition that
the general public could sign.
I think you told me there is.
You can go to change.org and look for a petition called Renaming the Stennis.
It hasn't grabbed a lot of the general public yet, but maybe it will.
Keith, do you think it has any prospect of having an impact on the congressmen or the
Congressional Black Caucus, or does it need a whole different type of effort?
I think you need a whole different type of effort.
I signed the petition quite some time ago.
The last time I checked, there weren't very many signatures on it.
But the Navy does not respond to outside pressure.
The military does not respond to outside pressure.
All of these issues with sexual harassment, discrimination, etc., have been ongoing for
decades.
And the Navy only responds when the people that control the purse strings have a say.
Well let's hope that some more momentum from Congress builds on renaming the John C. Stennis
before it serves another 25, 30 years and that this is just not the right name for this
aircraft carrier.
I certainly appreciate both of you, and that would be Captain John Cordell and Lieutenant
Commander Keith Green, both retired from the U.S. Navy, talking about the Stennis issue.
And I want to thank everybody for listening to Veterans Radio today.
I am Jim Fossone.
It's been a pleasure to be your host.
I'm a Veterans Disability Lawyer at Legal Help for Veterans, and you can reach us at
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