Army Base to Be Renamed for Native American War Hero, Replacing Confederate

WASHINGTON — It was a name synonymous with failure. More than 80 years ago, an Army base in Blackstone, Va., was named for George E. Pickett, the defeated Confederate general who led the disastrous “Pickett’s charge” at the Battle of Gettysburg.

Now the base is the first of nine named for a Confederate set to be redesignated by the end of this year. On Friday, Fort Pickett will become Fort Barfoot, in honor of Col. Van Barfoot, a World War II hero and a Medal of Honor recipient.

The ceremony will be the culmination of a yearslong effort to purge the symbols of the Confederacy from the military. The nine Army bases were originally named for Confederates during the Jim Crow era as part of a national movement to glorify the Confederacy and advance the Lost Cause myth that the Civil War was fought over “states’ rights” and not slavery.

The issue had ignited a political flashpoint between President Donald J. Trump and Congress. Amid a wave of demonstrations for racial justice in the summer of 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, Mr. Trump refused to allow the bases to be renamed, going so far as to veto the annual defense authorization bill that included the renaming provision. Congress ultimately forced the measure through, overriding the veto.

A commission established by Congress then recommended new names for the bases, selecting a diverse array of American warriors, including women, Black and Hispanic soldiers and Colonel Barfoot, a Choctaw who served 34 years in the Army. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III ordered the changes to be carried out by the end of 2023. The Navy renamed two ships this month as part of the initiative.

Serving in the 45th Infantry Division during World War II, Colonel Barfoot, then a technical sergeant, took part in the Battle of Anzio in Italy. On May 23, 1944, he single-handedly silenced three machine-gun nests, disabled a German tank with a bazooka, blew up an artillery cannon with a demolition charge and took 17 enemy soldiers prisoner.

In addition to everything else that day, he rescued two grievously wounded American soldiers, leading them about a mile to safety. His actions earned him the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for valor in combat. The Medal of Honor citation noted Colonel Barfoot’s “extraordinary heroism, demonstration of magnificent valor and aggressive determination in the face of point-blank fire.”

“I never lost my head,” Colonel Barfoot said of that day in a later interview. “I really didn’t sit down and think about what I had done.”

Later in life, Colonel Barfoot again drew national attention for successfully fighting his homeowners association to keep an American flag flying in his front yard. He died in 2012.

Fort Barfoot, a 41,000-acre facility just east of Blackstone, was established as Camp Pickett in 1942, one of dozens of temporary military facilities that sprouted across the country during World War II and one of eight major installations named for a Confederate in that period. Army policy at the time said bases that housed Southerners should be named for Confederate commanders.

The camp became a more permanent installation, Fort Pickett, in 1974, and was turned over to the Virginia National Guard in 1997.