RACIAL CHALLENGESAdvertisementThe president, who was introduced by the academy's first black superintendent, Lieutenant General Darryl Williams, also referred only passingly to the nation's racial challenges. "The army was at the forefront of ending the terrible injustice of segregation," he said, and it was West Point graduates who led the fight in the Civil War to "end the evil of slavery." Trump did not mention that one West Point barracks still bears the name of General Robert E. Lee, who led the break-away Confederate forces during that war, which brought an end to slavery. Trump has rejected recent demands to rename US military bases bearing the names of Confederate officers. The fracture in civil-military relations hung over Trump's address to the cadets at the picturesque West Point campus, situated in green hills north of New York City.

Source: Daily Nation June 14, 2020 04:18 UTC