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3. Letter

CNN reports the Navy is working to rename the future USS Doris Miller, a carrier under construction right now. Internally, Navy leadership has reportedly stopped using the name altogether. They just call it CVN-81. And two sources say there have been conversations about renaming it after Donald Trump, which would make it the first carrier in American history named for a sitting president. So who is Doris Miller? He was a sharecropper’s son from Waco, Texas, who enlisted in 1939, when mess attendant was one of the only jobs the Navy would give a Black man. On December 7th, 1941, when the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, Miller carried wounded shipmates to safety, then manned an anti-aircraft gun he had never been trained to fire and shot back at the enemy until he ran out of ammunition. Admiral Nimitz personally pinned the Navy Cross on his chest. Two years later, Miller was killed in action when his ship was torpedoed in the Pacific. In 2020, during Trump’s own first term, the Navy announced this carrier would bear his name. It would have been the first carrier ever named for an enlisted sailor, and the first named for a Black American. Now the Navy says it may put Miller’s name on a smaller ship and recommend him for the Medal of Honor instead. His family says nobody even told them the carrier was in question. They found out the way you just did. And this isn’t the first time this Pentagon has quietly pushed a Black military hero out of the frame. Remember what happened to the portrait of General Chappie James, the first Black four-star general in American history? Think about the contrast here. Trump has spent his whole life slapping his name on anything he can. Doris Miller earned his place on that hull with his own blood. And now this Pentagon wants to trade that in for a little flattery. That’s who they are.