President Obama nominates Black woman as first 4-Star U.S. Navy Admiral

24th March 2014   ·   0 Comments

By Frederick H. Lowe
Contributing Writer

(Special from The NorthStar News) – U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Michelle Howard has been nominated to be a four-star admiral by President Barack Obama. She was the first African-American woman to lead a combined task force of the Fifth Fleet to rescue MV Maresk Alabama, a ship commanded by Captain Richard Phillips after the vessel had been hijacked by Somali pirates.

If the U.S. Senate confirms the nomination, Rear Admiral Howard would be the first woman to attain the rank, according to the publication Navy Advancement.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced Rear Admiral Howard’s nomination as a four-star admiral and as vice chief of naval operations at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on Dec­ember 13, according to the Department of Defense.

She is currently deputy chief of naval operations for operations, plans and strategy, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations at the Pentagon. A rear admiral has two stars.

The 2013 movie, Captain Phillips, starring Tom Hanks, never mentions the role Rear Admiral Howard played in the rescue of the Maresk Alabama, a container ship, in 2009 after pirates boarded the vessel in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Somalia.

Under Rear Admiral Howard’s leadership, Captain Richard Phillips and his crew were successfully rescued, according to Rhumb Lines, which documents African-American history in the U.S. Navy. Rear Admiral Howard’s role in the rescue was published on Jan. 28, 2010. The Navy Office of Information publishes Rhumb Lines.

Other publications also have confirmed her role in Phillips’ rescue. She was aboard the U.S.S. Boxer, the amphibious-assault ship that served as her command ship, when the call came in that the Maresk Alabama had been hijacked. It was Howard’s role to rescue Phillips.

The Fifth Fleet of the United States Navy is responsible for naval forces in the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, Arabian Sea and parts of the Indian Ocean.

Readers of MailOnline, a London newspaper that saw Captain Phillips, said the movie never mentions Howard. “Why?” a reader asks.

Others responding to her nomination were racist, calling her a “twofer” [Black and a woman]. Still others wrote that President Obama’s appointment of Howard is an indication that the U.S. Navy is in decline.

Howard, a 1982 graduate of the United States Naval Acad­emy, became the first Afri­can-American woman to lead a U.S. Navy ship, when she was named commander of the USS Rushmore, a dock-landing ship, in 1999. The Navy launched the ship in 1989.

Howard is also a 1978 graduate of Gateway High School in Aurora, Colo, according to her biography.

This article originally published in the December 23, 2013 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.