Fort Hood returns, but there is a twist on the renaming of the Army base

Trump administration uses legal workaround to restore original base names while removing recognition of Hispanic general, women and Black soldiers

The Army stripped the name of the nation’s first Hispanic four-star general from Fort Hood on Tuesday, replacing Medal of Honor recipient Gen. Richard Cavazos with a World War I colonel from Kansas who shares the surname of the Confederate general the Texas base originally honored.

The move represents the most dramatic shift in a broader Trump administration effort to rename seven Army installations, removing recognition from diverse military heroes including women and Black soldiers while installing new honorees who are predominantly white men.

President Donald Trump announced the changes during a speech at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, using a legal workaround that allows the bases to revert to their original Confederate-era names while honoring different soldiers with the same surnames.

“For a little breaking news, we are also going to be restoring the names to Fort Pickett, Fort Hood, Fort Gordon, Fort Rucker, Fort Polk, Fort A.P. Hill, and Fort Robert E. Lee,” Trump said Tuesday.

Texas base loses native son

The decision hits particularly hard at Fort Hood, where Cavazos served as III Corps commanding general from 1980 to 1982. President Joe Biden posthumously awarded Cavazos the Medal of Honor in January 2025 for heroism during the Korean War, making his removal even more striking.

The base will now honor Col. Robert B. Hood, who was born in Wellington, Kansas, in 1891 and earned the Distinguished Service Cross during World War I. Hood has no apparent connection to Texas, according to Army records.

“While we are saddened by the news of Fort Cavazos, as well as for the other duly named bases that were renamed after brave, hardworking American heroes, we continue to express our support and admiration for all service members,” the Cavazos family said in a statement.

The original Fort Hood honored Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood, who led some Texas forces during the Civil War. Historian David Eicher remarked, “If Hood mortally wounded his army at Franklin, he would kill it two weeks later at Nashville.” In total, Hood’s aggressive tactics cost the Confederacy over 40,000 casualties in less than six months, effectively destroying the Army of Tennessee as a fighting force.

Legal workaround enables changes

Federal law prohibits renaming military installations after Confederate figures, but the Trump administration found a legal pathway by selecting new honorees who share the same surnames.

“They found some people with similar names so they could work around it,” said Lawrence Romo, a member of the congressionally mandated Base Naming Commission that recommended the 2023 changes.

The commission was formed in 2021 following widespread protests over social injustice that brought attention to Confederate monuments and namesakes. Congress voted to override Trump’s veto of the legislation with overwhelming bipartisan support.

Diversity sharply reduced

The new naming scheme dramatically reduces the diversity of those honored. The 2023 changes recognized three African Americans, three women and one Hispanic soldier. The new list includes eight white soldiers and one African American.

Among those losing recognition:

• Dr. Mary Walker, the only woman to receive the Medal of Honor, who was honored at Fort Walker
• Sgt. William Henry Johnson, a Black Medal of Honor recipient known as one of the “Harlem Hellfighters”
• Lt. Gen. Arthur Gregg and Lt. Col. Charity Adams, who commanded the first all-Black, all-female American battalion deployed overseas during World War II

The sole African American honoree in the new list is Pvt. Fitz Lee, a Buffalo Soldier who earned the Medal of Honor during the Spanish-American War for rescuing wounded comrades under enemy fire in Cuba.

Immediate implementation

Unlike the careful, ceremonial process that marked the 2023 renamings, the new changes took effect immediately Wednesday morning.

“The change has Augustans’ heads spinning, but they say they’ll support it no matter what it’s called,” reported WRDW-TV about Fort Gordon’s overnight transformation back from Fort Eisenhower.

Maj. Gen. Ryan Janovic, commander of the Army Cyber Center of Excellence at Fort Gordon, announced the change was effective immediately, with plans for a more formal ceremony later.

Cost and logistics

The Army provided no immediate cost estimate for changing signs and materials at the bases, just two years after spending an estimated $62.5 million implementing the 2023 recommendations.

Green highway signs maintained by state and city governments will need updating again. Augusta traffic officials said in 2022 that such signs cost $140 each.

Defense Secretary’s sole

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has moved quickly to roll back diversity initiatives across the military. In February, he issued a memorandum changing Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg, and ordered the Navy to rename the oiler ship USNS Harvey Milk.

“They worked around the law. They took away the names of three African Americans, three women and one Hispanic,” said Romo, the former naming commission member. “You want minorities to be recruited to the military. So why do you take away their heroes?”

The changes affect installations across Virginia, Georgia, Texas, Louisiana and Alabama, with formal ceremonies planned to mark the redesignations in coming weeks.

Sources: CNN, Task & Purpose, Texas Public Radio, WRDW-TV, Dallas Morning News, Yahoo News, KENS-5, Military Times, National Museum of African American History and Culture