Doris Miller, a Navy hero, may be marginalized again

When the Navy announced in 2020 that its newest Ford-class supercarrier would be named the USS Doris Miller, it was heralded as a long-overdue corrective to a shameful chapter in military history. Finally, the first Black American sailor to receive the Navy Cross, for his heroism at Pearl Harbor, was getting the ultimate recognition.

Now, that hard-won honor is reportedly on the chopping block.

The Navy is weighing stripping Miller's name from the planned CVN-81 carrier and possibly renaming it in honor of President Donald Trump, CNN reported recently. No official action has been taken, and according to CNN the Navy is looking at naming another warship for Miller.

Still, to erase the name of a man who valiantly fought and died for his country in favor of a politician who received multiple draft deferments during the Vietnam War — citing bone spurs — insults Miller's legacy. In his case, the institutional marginalization is tragically familiar.

On Dec. 7, 1941, Dorie Miller's actions aboard the battleship West Virginia were extraordinarily bold. As Japanese forces devastated the fleet, killing 130 men on his ship alone, the strapping 22-year-old from Waco, Texas, leaped into action. Without training, Miller commandeered the anti-aircraft machine gun of a fallen gunner. "I had watched the others with these guns," he later explained. He fired at the enemy for 15 minutes, shooting down as many as four planes, and carried several wounded sailors to safety. He only stopped when ordered off the sinking ship.

Yet, when the Navy announced the commendations a month later, it deliberately omitted his name. He was recognized only as an unnamed Black seaman.

This refusal to publicly recognize Miller reflected a deeply biased, segregated military system. At the time, the Navy relegated Black sailors to menial roles like mess attendant — the job assigned to Miller — and refused to train them to operate weaponry.

It took the intervention of high-level Washington insiders to break through the bigotry. Ernest Cuneo, acting as a liaison for the Office of Strategic Services and a White House insider, was appalled by what he called the Navy's "nasty prejudice." Teaming with Attorney General Frances Biddle, Cuneo opened up "a sustained attack of heavy journalistic artillery on the Admirals."

The pressure campaign worked. Four months after the white sailors were recognized, Miller's name was finally released as he was awarded the Navy Cross. He was briefly celebrated as a national hero. The repentant Navy even used his face on a recruiting poster.

The systemic bias remained. Despite his proven valor in combat, Miller was sent back into the war assigned to a new ship, still as a lowly cook. In November 1943, he was lost at sea when Japanese torpedoes sunk his escort carrier, killing 646 seamen.

Miller's sacrifice became a cause célèbre. Langston Hughes eulogized him in verse. Broadcaster Walter Winchell publicly weaponized Miller's legacy against Southern segregationists in Congress, declaring that the name of this "messman hero" would forever be "more valuable to American history" than those of bigoted politicians.

Winchell was right, but today's Navy leadership seems to have forgotten it. Naming CVN-81 the USS Doris Miller was meant to be the ultimate institutional apology — a permanent, floating monument to a man who gave everything to a military that initially refused to even speak his name. To quietly scrub his name from the hull before the ship is even built is to victimize Dorie Miller all over again.

This guest essay reflects the views of Thomas Maier, a former Newsday editorial board member and author whose 2025 book, "The Invisible Spy," chronicles the life of World War II American spy Ernest Cuneo.