The idea that the new span over the waters crossed by the bridge named for Francis Scott Key deserves a new name gets a sympathetic ear here at the Sun. It’s not that the composer of our national anthem once enslaved African Americans and wrote offensive lyrics, though one could discuss that. It’s rather a thought that struck what passes for our brain when we were reading the recommendations in respect of our military bases.

It is that America has such a bountiful supply of heroic persons that it seems only logical to rotate — every few generations — the names for our public installations and edifices. We bear no lasting ill-will to, say, General Leonidas Polk, of the fort that once bore his name, though he did appear in arms against America and commanded two separate corps in the Confederacy’s Army of Tennessee. He was by all accounts loved by his soldiers.

Then, again, too, what about Sergeant Henry Johnson, awarded the Medal of Honor for his valor in World War I? The rawness of his courage when his post in France came under attack is hard to imagine (he dispatched his last foes with a machete). Wearing the French Croix de Guerre he was paraded up Fifth Avenue only to die forgotten in poverty. Racism denied him America’s highest award for valor in his lifetime. It was awarded, finally, by President Obama.

So who could say that any injustice lies in giving the valorous sergeant, an African American, a share of glory over the 98,000 acres of what used to be called Fort Polk and is now Fort Johnson? Or Hal and Julia Moore a share of the glory over what was once called Fort Benning? And why begrudge the heroes civil rights leaders at Baltimore are handing up for honorees of the new bridge spanning Baltimore Harbor? 

The call to rename the bridge when it is rebuilt — reported in the Baltimore Banner — comes from the Caucus of African American Leaders, a consortium that includes the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and other civil rights groups. The caucus proposes naming the new span after Representative Parren Mitchell, who was the first African-American to be elected to Congress from the Old Line State.

Mitchell, who died in 2007, was a Baltimore native who earned a Purple Heart while serving in the 92nd Infantry Division of the U.S. Army during World War II. He went on to serve as a sociology professor at Morgan State University before he was elected to Congress. On Capitol Hill, he was an advocate for affirmative action, a co-founder of the Congressional Black Caucus, and led efforts to use federal aid to boost minority-owned businesses.

Another name put forward by the caucus as worthy of recognition is, as the Banner puts it, a “civil rights pioneer and leader in Maryland,” Gloria Richardson, who died in 2021 at 99. “One of the most influential leaders” in the civil rights movement, the Maryland Women’s Hall of Fame calls her. “A first-class citizen does not beg for freedom,” was her mantra during the crusade for racial equality. 

That we might not be in accord with their nominees on various issues doesn’t bother us. We oppose taking down statues or shredding portraits (as happened to Lord Balfour’s in Britain the other week) in almost every case. Nobody is dismantling the bridge to Baltimore — the wayward cargo ship Dali did that —  just rebuilding it and taking the occasion to give someone else a moment or a generation or two to share in their own glory.

That’s how we thought of it when it came to our army bases. We were motivated not by derision for General Braxton Bragg or General Polk but by admiration, awe even, of those who would get the next chance in history’s spotlight. They celebrate some less-heralded 20th-century American heroes. “The New Names for Glory,” is how we described them. The moment beckons for a new bridge to glory — or, in respect of Richardson, Gloria.