NEWPORT NEWS, Mr. (AP) – The USS Arkansas nuclear submarine was christened Saturday, nearly 10 years in the making since the US Navy announced that the Virginia-class submarine would carry the state’s name.
Carlotta Walls LaNier, one of the nine Black students who walked out of Little Rock Central High School in 1957, started a bottle of wine drinking inside a Virginia-class submarine at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia.
In 2018, then-Navy Secretary Ray Mabus named the six women of the Little Rock Nine as supporters of the ship. Besides LaNier, Elizabeth Eckford and Gloria Ray Karlmark also attended the ceremony. All the sponsors had their names engraved on metal plates when the submarine’s keel was installed in 2022.
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“History is full of groups of people coming together to do something,” the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported LaNier as saying in a speech before a crowd at the boathouse. “Many people are behind the submarine we christened today. It’s like the quote on our money, E pluribus unum — ‘Out of many, one.’ We have SSN 800, but many have participated in the fact of being here today. “
The Secretary of the Navy, Carlos Del Toro, called the ship “the best of our submarine capabilities.”
“He will always be inspired by the proud legacy of his name, represented here today by three of his bravest supporters, who overcame great adversity as members of the Little Rock Nine,” said Del Toro.
Several speakers also marked the 83rd anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the event that brought the United States into World War II.
The submarine is the fifth battleship named Arkansas, including the warship. The latest was a guided missile cruiser that was decommissioned in 1988.
The Arkansas is the 27th in a line of Virginia-class submarines and the 13th built at Newport News, the main shipyard for Huntington Ingalls Industries. Other submarines are built at General Dynamics Corp.’s Electric Boat shipyard in Connecticut.
The Arkansas is expected to open in 2025.