Status: Active

Established: November 13th, 1993

USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74) is the seventh Nimitz-class nuclear-powered supercarrier in the United States Navy, named for Democratic Senator John C. Stennis of Mississippi.

She was commissioned on 9 December 1995. Her home port is temporarily Norfolk, Virginia, for her scheduled refueling complex and overhaul, which began in 2019. After her overhaul is completed sometime in the 2020s, she is scheduled to return to Bremerton, Washington.

The ship was christened on 11 November 1993, in honor of Senator John Cornelius Stennis (D-Mississippi) who served in the Senate from 1947 to 1989. The daughter of the ship's namesake, Mrs. Margaret Stennis-Womble, was the ship's sponsor. John C. Stennis was commissioned on 9 December 1995 at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, and she conducted flight deck certification in January 1996.

Stennis was a zealous supporter of racial segregation. He signed the Southern Manifesto, which called for massive resistance to the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. He also voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. He supported the extension of the Voting Rights Act in 1982 but voted against the establishment of Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a national holiday.