Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2021
In July, the Navy christened the first of a new class of Navy ships the USNS John Lewis, naming a warship after the late nonviolent activist, civil and human rights leader, and longtime Congressional Representative. The Navy also announced plans to name the entire class of ships (known as oilers) after civic leaders including Harvey Milk, Bobby Kennedy, Lucy Stone, and Sojourner Truth. The absurdity was opposed by US Rep. Steve Palazzo, R-Miss., who sponsored a bill to prevent warships from being named for people who didn’t serve in the military. The measure never came to the floor for a vote. In 1961, John Lewis was one of the original thirteen Freedom Riders who challenged segregation on interstate busses, and he was among those beaten and arrested. He later chaired the radical Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee which led lunch counter sit-ins and other civil disobedience campaigns. Lewis was eventually elected to the US House of Representatives seventeen times, where among fellow Democrats he was known as “the conscience of Congress.” The Navy’s coopting of Lewis’s name can be seen as a cynical PR appeal to the African American community following the police murder of George Floyd. — US Naval Institute News, July 18, 2021; Washington Post, June 14, 2016; Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 21, 2006
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