A building at the U.S. Naval Academy that had been named after a leader in the Confederate Navy was renamed Friday in honor of former President Jimmy Carter, who graduated from the academy in 1946.
The decision to rename the engineering building in Annapolis was made after a commission mandated by Congress determined several military assets across all branches of the service had to be renamed because of Confederate ties.
The building that had been called Maury Hall was built and named in the early 1900s after Matthew Fontaine Maury, a naval officer and scientist who joined the Confederates.
The Naval Academy superintendent's house and a nearby road are named after Franklin Buchanan, the academy's first superintendent who left to join the Confederate Navy at the start of the Civil War. The academy also is renaming the house and road, but has yet to announce those changes.
Carter, who is 98, was president from 1977 to 1981. He did not attend the ceremony, though some of his relatives did.
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“It would be impossible to overstate what this Academy and the Navy has meant to my grandfather, and by extension to my family,” said Josh Carter, Jimmy Carter’s grandson, in a news release from the Navy.
