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(CN) — In an announcement coinciding with the end of Pride Month, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Friday the U.S. Navy would rename the USNS Harvey Milk, a replenishment oiler christened after the Navy veteran and gay rights activist who was assassinated in 1978.
“We are taking the politics out of ship naming,” Hegspeth said in a statement on X. “We’re not renaming the ship for anything political. This is not about political activists, unlike the previous administration.”
The ship was named during President Barack Obama’s second term, though it was not launched until 2021, during Joe Biden’s presidency. It will be renamed the USNS Oscar V. Peterson, after a Navy officer who was awarded the Medal of Honor for the actions he took to save a sinking ship during the Battle of the Coral Sea in World War II. Peterson suffered severe burns during the battle and was buried at sea.
Milk served in the Navy as a diving officer aboard a submarine rescue ship during the Korean War, but later resigned to avoid an inquiry over his sexuality. After his service, he moved to San Francisco, where he became a prominent LGBTQ+ activist and community leader.
In 1977, he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, making history as one of the first openly gay elected officials in the country. In the role, Milk advocated for LGBTQ+ rights, labor reforms, and social justice, but his career was cut short when he was assassinated by a disgruntled former supervisor who opposed progressive policies.
In his brief remarks, Hegseth suggested that “people want to be proud of the ship they’re sailing in.”
In response, Stuart Milk, a civil rights attorney and Harvey’ Milk’s nephew, posted a statement on behalf of the Harvey Milk Foundation on Facebook Friday. He said Hegseth’s move was “petty and dishonest,” noting Harvey Milk joined the Navy as a commissioned officer during the Korean War and “served honorably.”
“We may have lost a back door battle to stop this misguided action, but I thank you all for having been a part of celebrating the ship’s, albeit brief, legacy,” Stuart Milk wrote. “The USNS Harvey Milk’s symbol of hope, having existed at all, will live on in hearts and minds of millions across the globe! Neither the bullets that took his life, nor the stripping of his name from this ship will stop my uncle’s message of hope, hope unshamed, hope unafraid, from reaching all that yearn for acceptance and love across the globe.”
The ship is currently in dry dock in Mobile, Alabama undergoing scheduled repairs. It is moored alongside a sister ship, the USNS Medgar Evers, which has also reportedly been targeted for renaming. Evers, an Army veteran, later became an influential civil rights leader in embattled Mississippi, where he was assassinated by a member of the Ku Klux Klan in 1963.
Speaking to Courthouse News about the potential renaming Friday, Evers’ great-niece Courtney E. Cockrell expressed disappointment over the potential renaming, emphasizing Evers’ continued relevance and contributions to civil rights.
“He served in the Army to fight for the rights of America, only to come home to have to continue to fight for civil and human rights here in Mississippi and in America,” Cockrell said. “It’s our position that he’s just as worthy today as he was when the ship was christened in 2011.”
Coincidentally, the Evers family foundation is hosting a 100th birthday celebration for Evers this weekend.
“He fought for civil and human rights for everybody, and not only here, he was a soldier,” Cockrell said. “Those are the types of people who we should be honoring and those are the legacies that we should be uplifting and making sure that everybody knows about their contributions. So we’re extremely disappointed and really don’t have an understanding of why such a decision would be made.”
The Trump administration has also discussed renaming ships named after Thurgood Marshall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Harriet Tubman, Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez and Lucy Stone.
As of Friday, the names of both ships remained intact and visible on their stern, according to a reporter who viewed them from across the Mobile River. Neither the Navy nor the Department of Defense immediately responded to additional questions.
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