John P. Cordle, Dr. Eng, Pdt (Prolific Disruptive Thinker)’s Post

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Human Factors Engineer - Sleep Advocate - Striving to Improve Sailors’ lives through better engineering and advocacy.

Naval Academy Alumni: I have a question for you. Senator Stennis is known as the “Father of the Modern Navy” for his staunch support of the Aircraft Carrier Fleet at a critical time in our history. He was also a staunch segregationist. When we published new research showing not only Senator Stennis’s record of opposing Civil Rights legislation, his fight against integration of the armed forces, and his effectiveness in blocking Black Americans from the Southern States from access to USNA nominations for almost 4 decades, I assumed three things: 1. As an Alumnus, you would be interested in learning about his segregationist history. 2. You would care and it would bother you that we have a ship named for him. 3. It would bother you enough that you would speak out for a name change. I’ll add #4 (you can PM me): I agree with all 3 but have too much to lose if I speak out. If you aren’t sure about #1, you can start here or with the attached PPT. https://lnkd.in/dBk23meh Which of my assumptions was flawed?

And if it wasn’t for Stennis you wouldn’t have many of the ships of the US Navy! He was a strong supporter of Ingalls Shipbuilding, a provider of more that 75% of the surface combatants over the last 50 years! He and Senator Lott together saw to it that Ingalls stayed in operation to support the maintenance and new construction of ships for the Navy’s future and beyond!

Jim Small

Principal Investigator

1mo

Don’t choose naval vessel names as rewards to politicians. Don’t name them after living people. Migrate back to more traditional naming conventions. Heck, if we’d build some cruisers we could name them after cities. Look forward, don’t rename ships as if they are elementary schools or streets. If anything, Stennis retaining its name will serve to highlight these questions until she is decommissioned and scrapped.

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