A Navy supply ship named for former Navy officer and 1970s civil rights icon Harvey Milk may soon be stripped of its name at the direction of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a defense official confirmed to Task & Purpose.
A plan to strip the USNS Harvey Milk of its name was first reported by Military.com. Additional plans to erase the names of other key civil rights figures from the Milk’s sister ships are also under consideration, though not imminent, the official confirmed to Task & Purpose. Those plans were first reported by CBS News.
A plan to announce the renaming of the Milk, one of the best-known gay activists in U.S. history, was set for mid-June, which is widely celebrated as “Pride Month.” The decision to announce the name change during Pride Month was intentional, the defense official said.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called the decision a “shameful, vindictive erasure of those who fought to break down barriers for all to chase the American Dream.”
Names of other civil rights leaders could be erased
The Milk is one of five active USNS John Lewis-class replenishment oilers, of which 20 are planned. All that have so far been named were named for civil rights icons. The ships reported to be under consideration for name changes beyond the Milk are Lewis-class ships named for Supreme Court justices Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Civil War abolitionist and Union spy Harriet Tubman, and four other civil rights figures, according to CBS. Some of those ships have, in Navy tradition, been named but not yet completed or launched.
Based in Norfolk, Virginia, the USNS Harvey Milk is operated by Military Sealift Command. Christened in 2021 and active since 2023, the ship refuels and resupplies other Navy ships while underway, including aircraft carriers.
Navy ships formally receive their names from — and in rare cases, have been renamed by — the Secretary of the Navy, a legal requirement which would be the case with the Milk, according to the defense official and reporting by the two organizations. But the decision to strike the name of Milk, a former Navy lieutenant junior grade, gay activist, and elected official in the 1970s, originated with Hegseth, according to the defense official and reporting on the change.
For Hegseth, renaming is a high priority
The move would not be Hegseth’s first foray into renaming major military assets. One of Hegseth’s first actions in office was to restore the names of Fort Bragg and, soon after, Fort Benning, both of which had been renamed in 2023 due to those names’ lineage to Confederate generals. They were renamed in 2023 as Fort Liberty and Fort Moore, the latter for Col. Hal and Julia Moore, legends in the Army infantry world. Hegseth ordered the names restored and Defense officials elevated previously-obscure soldiers from World War I and II who shared those names as the base’s official namesakes.
Several hours after the first reports of the plan to rename USNS Harvey Milk, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell released a statement that did not address the USNS Milk, but said that one or more ships could be renamed after “internal reviews.”
“Secretary Hegseth is committed to ensuring that the names attached to all DOD installations and assets are reflective of the Commander-in-Chief’s priorities, our nation’s history, and the warrior ethos. Any potential renaming(s) will be announced after internal reviews are complete.”
Milk was a Navy officer before entering politics as a gay activist in the 1960s and 70s. He joined the Navy in 1951, serving aboard the submarine rescue ship USS Kittiwake and then as a diving instructor in San Diego. He left the service in 1955.
Politically conservative for much of his early life, Milk worked on Wall Street soon after leaving the Navy and on Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign for President. He eventually came to politics through his interests as a small business owner in an increasingly gay neighborhood in San Francisco. He organized labor strikes, leading gay community boycotts of businesses targeted by unions. He eventually became a leader in local civil rights issues, including helping pass housing discrimination laws. He was elected to the San Francisco board of supervisors in 1977 as the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California.
Milk was killed in 1978 when another member of the board, Dan White, shot and killed both Milk and the mayor in a targeted assassination. White, a former police officer, blamed Milk and the mayor for his political downfall and killed the two men in their city hall offices after climbing through a window to avoid the building’s metal detectors.
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