Difference between revisions of "Troy H. Middleton"

Revision as of 14:31, June 20, 2020

Troy Houston Middleton (October 12, 1889 – October 9, 1976) was a United States Army officer in both World War I and World War II and an educator who became the 13th president of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with service from 1951 to 1962.

Background

Middleton was born near Hazlehurst in Copiah County, Mississippi, to John Houston Middleton (1856-1935) and the former Katherine Louise Thompson (1860-1925), who are interred at Bethel Baptist Church Cemetery in Hazlehurst in Copiah County.^[1] Middleton was educated in Copiah County public schools and what subsequently became Mississippi State University in Starkville, which he attended from 1904 to 1909.^[2]

Career

In 1910, Middleton enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army and two years thereafter was commissioned a second lieutenant]in the infantry. In 1915, he wed the former Jerusha Emily Collins (1890-1980), originally from Galveston, Texas. The couple had two children: Troy, Jr. (1922-2006), who was a lieutenant colonel in the Army in World War II and the Korean War who is interred iat Pine Crest Cemetery in Mobile, Alabama,^[3] and Bernice Collins (1926-2012), who is interred at Roselawn Memorial Park and Mausoleum in Baton Rouge, where she had lived nearly all of her life.^[2]

In 1916, Middleton he was elevated to first lieutenant and in 1917 as a captain during World War I and major-colonel in 1918. At age of twenty-nine, he was youngest colonel in General John J. Pershing's American Expeditionary Force in France. He commanded both the 39th and 47th Infantry regiments in combat. In the peacetime army, he reverted to the rank of captain in 1919 and studied and taught in the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, from 1919 to 1923. He was elevated to major in 1920 and then studied and taught at the Command and General Staff School in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, from 1923 to 1928. Through his time at Leavenworth, nearly all of the men who were to command divisions in Europe in World War II studied at the Command School. At one point, each corps commander in Europe had been a student under Middleton at the Command School. Middleton instructed the later Allied Supreme Commander and subsequent U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who, only a year younger than Middleton, ranked first in the Leavenworth class of 1925-1926. From 1928 to 1929, Middleton studied at the Army War College in Washington, D.C. The next year, 1929 to 1930, he was the battalion commander of the 29th Infantry at Fort Benning.^[2]

From 1930 to 1936, Middleton commanded the cadets at LSU. He was elevated to lieutenant colonel in 1935 and sent to the Philippines from 1936-1937. He retired from the Army the first time in 1937 and returned to LSU as dean of administration and vice-president from 1937 to 1942. With the advent of World War II, at the age of fifty-two, he re-entered the Army and served as commanding general of the 45th Infantry Division in Sicily, the 8th Corps in Belgium, France, and Germany during the war and from 1945 to 1951, when he retired for the second time as lieutenant general. LSU selected him as president in 1951, and he remained at the helm until 1962, during the early years of the civil rights movement. He was president emeritus from 1962 until his death in Baton Rouge three days before his 87th birthday.^[2]

Running afoul of political correctness

In June 2020, nearly forty-four years after General Middleton's passing, politically correct liberal activists and Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards called fcr the removal of Middleton's name and bust from the campus Middleton Library. A letter in 1961 was uncovered which revealed that Middleton had blocked African Americans from LSU athletics though blacks were admitted as students at the flagship school. Edwards, who often invokes in political campaigns his own military record at West Point and the honor code, called upon the LSU Board of Supervisors, whom he appoints, to remove any reference to Middleton from LSU, much like what George Orwell in his writings had predicted a dark future for Western Civilization. Edwards referred to Middleton as a segregationist.^[4]

Middleton's heirs, presumably grandchildren and great-grandchildren, asked to address the LSU supervisors to defend the general from the attacks against his legacy that occurred in the wake of the George Floyd shooting death in Minneapolis, Minnesota.^[4] The supervisors did not meet with the Middleton family and ignored an eloquent defense of General Middleton offered by former state Representative Woody Jenkins of Baton Rouge, who knew Middleton personall, and called upon the supervisors to consider the full context of Middleton's life. The supervisors voted unanimously to delete Middleton's name from the library. Within just two hours, the name was chiseled away letter by letter. The supervisors' action came on the day known as "Juneteenth" in the civil rights community, named for the freeing of the last slaves in the former Confederacy at Galveston, Texas.^[5]

Jenkins said that despite Middleton's segregationist views in the 1950s, the general had enforced the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when he was appointed by Governor John J. McKeithen as the chairman of the Governor's Biracial Commission on Human Relations, Rights and Responsibilities in 1965. Jenkins said that Middleton "was at the forefront" in the resoulution of racial crises in the 1960s in Alexandria, Opelousas in St. Lanery Parish, Ferriday in Concordia Parish,, and Bogalusa^[5] in Governor John Bel Edwards' Tangipahoa Parish.

Robert E. Lee High School in Baton Rouge was also renamed Lee High School in 2016, without the full name "Robert E. Lee." Then on June 18, 2020, the politically correct East Baton Rouge Parish School Board appointed a committee to develop an alternative name for Lee High School. Connie Bernard, a Republican member of the school board for District 8, at first defended the name of General Lee and urged his critics to study the totality of Lee's career. However, Bernard quickly reversed course and pledged to work for racial reconciliation: “I condemn racial injustice in any form. I promise to be part of the solution and to listen to the concerns of all members of our community. I stand with you, in love and respect. … I agree with (New Orleans Saints football player) Drew Brees when he said, ‘We have a long way to go…. We can do better. We are all part of the solution.’ I promise I will be part of the solution.”^[6] In 2018, another Robert E. Lee High School in San Antonio, Texas, was renamed "L.E.E. High Schoo" by the politically correct trustees of the North East Independent School District.

References