‘To me, it’s still going to be Fort Bragg’: Name change for iconic Army base touches a nerve

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — Fort Bragg, the legendary Army installation to be renamed “Fort Liberty” on Friday, has been the central gravitational force for many military careers and families.

“I left in 1997, came back after three years in Okinawa. I came back to Fort Bragg, and I retired in 2014 from Fort Bragg,” said Army veteran Nikki Saulsberry, who began her service at the sprawling base in central North Carolina in 1989.

“My military career is on Fort Bragg. My kids were born here. My kids don’t know anything but Fort Bragg,” she said in an interview. “I think for the newer generation, when they get there, all they will know is Fort Liberty. But to me, it’s still going to be Fort Bragg.”

Swept up in the popular reaction to the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, during an encounter with Minneapolis police, the Pentagon announced a wide-reaching plan to scrub forts, bases, ships and other sites of names honoring the Confederacy and its military leaders.

The Army garrison opened in 1918 and was named for Gen. Braxton Bragg, a native North Carolinian and former artillery commander who fought for the South in the Civil War. The sprawling Fort Bragg was squarely in the crosshairs after Congress overrode President Trump’s objections in 2020 and ordered the name-changing campaign to proceed.

For one of the world’s most populous military installations, the transition does not promise to be easy.

Now the president of the Retired Military Association of North Carolina, Ms. Saulsberry spoke to The Washington Times after the organization’s annual Memorial Day ceremony in Fayetteville, which is inextricably tied to the base culturally, emotionally and economically.

Those ties run deep. Many local businesses, including pawn shops, banks and motorcycle dealerships, proudly bear “Bragg” in their names. Bragg Boulevard runs through the heart of one of the region’s busiest business corridors.

The nearby All American Freeway leads to the base, home to the 18th Airborne Corps and its most famous division, the 82nd Airborne. By population, it’s the largest military base in the country, where more than 53,000 active-duty troops are stationed and 14,000 civilians work on site.

Fort Bragg is about to undergo a historic change. An independent military base-naming commission has decided that it is now to be known as Fort Liberty. All references to Bragg have been removed. Street signs have been or will soon be changed.

Local business leaders say they expect the vast majority of companies named in honor of the base to rebrand themselves over the next 18 months. Liberty Ford of Fayetteville already has embraced the base’s new name.

The rebranding may be the easy part. In interviews with nearly a dozen veterans who served on the base and subsequently built lives for themselves and their families in Fayetteville, reactions ranged from ambivalence to sadness and, in some cases, anger.

The symbolism of the name change is just one piece of the problem. Another is the eye-popping cost of about $6 million. Millions more dollars are going toward the renamings of nine other Army installations.

Some see a political agenda at work.

“I believe in the economy. We’re spending $6.5 million to change a name for wokeism. That is insane,” said Don Talbot, an 83-year-old Army veteran who reported to Fort Bragg in 1963 at the age of 23. He went on to spend three years in Vietnam.

“Spending tax dollars to change a name. That’s ridiculous,” he told The Times while standing in the city’s Freedom Memorial Park, just steps away from monuments honoring those who died in World War I, World War II, the Korean conflict, Vietnam and other wars throughout American history. Mr. Talbot was among dozens of veterans who participated in the city’s annual Memorial Day ceremony at the park.

“We all know Fort Bragg because that’s our home. It’s not going to be Fort Liberty forever in our hearts, in our minds,” Mr. Talbot said. “I had tears in my eyes [as crews were] taking the signs down on Bragg Boulevard.”

Commanders say the redesignation will have no impact on the day-to-day functioning of the base or the installation’s reputation as the backbone of the U.S. Army. Personnel at the base, officials insist, aren’t preoccupied with the politics behind the renaming process.

“Here’s what I do know: Change is constant,” said Lt. Gen. Chris Donahue, commanding general of the 18th Airborne Corps.

“If you’re around any young kid who’s in the Army, here’s the one thing I do know: They don’t want to hear about the past. They want to hear about the future,” he told The Times this week after being asked whether the redesignation was bittersweet for him and the men and women under his command.

Touching a nerve

The Pentagon has gone to great lengths to stem potential backlash and, to the extent possible, to keep the name-change initiative from becoming a weapon in partisan politics and a growing cultural struggle across the country. The redesignations have resulted in few notable public protests and relatively little talk on Capitol Hill.

The Defense Department’s naming commission had its origins in the months of nationwide racial unrest stemming from the May 2020 death of Floyd. The renaming push, which began in 2021, was the clearest example of the Pentagon’s broader effort to purge its historical ties to the Confederacy and its legacy of slavery.

Mr. Trump, an outspoken opponent of the redesignations, vetoed an annual defense spending bill that established the commission, but a bipartisan majority in both chambers of Congress overrode his veto.

The process moved slowly but kicked into high gear this year. Fort Hood in Texas is now Fort Cavazos, named after the Army’s first four-star Hispanic general. Georgia’s Fort Benning was renamed Fort Moore in honor of Gen. Hal Moore, a Vietnam War hero portrayed by Mel Gibson in the film “We Were Soldiers.”

In a vacuum, there is little opposition to the core understanding that honoring Confederate Civil War figures in the 21st century is at best a questionable idea. At worst, it could easily be seen as deeply offensive, especially by Black Americans.

Yet the effort isn’t taking place in a vacuum. It’s part of what critics see as a much broader push to erase parts of the nation’s past and to demonize all historical figures who may have fallen short of the social and cultural standards of today.

More broadly, unease with the direction of the country was on full display in Fayetteville.

“I believe this country is still worth fighting for, and I am still one of the ones that could squeeze the trigger if I had to take back our country. Because at some point in time, you just have to look at the things that are going on around you and say, ‘Something isn’t right,’” retired Army Maj. Gen. William Kirkland said during his keynote speech at the Memorial Day ceremony in Fayetteville. “Something just isn’t right. … If push comes to shove and I have to jump back in uniform of some sort, I will be one of the first ones out saying that this we will defend, and I’m pointing to the U.S. flag.”

After the ceremony, Gen. Kirkland was asked by The Times about his thoughts on the renaming effort.

“I’m not woke. We’re trying to appease a lot of folks who have no clue,” said Gen. Kirkland, a Black man. “After the Civil War, from what I’ve read, that was a conciliation for the South being repatriated back [into the United States], to try to bring people back together. Fast-forward, we have done the exact opposite now.”

Many others echo that sentiment.

“I think it’s uncalled for, unnecessary. It’s culture change, or change culture, whatever,” said 72-year-old Army veteran Michael Gillis, who served at Fort Bragg.

Others said they were always aware of the history of the base and don’t fully understand the sudden, fierce push to make the change.

“We knew who they were. But now all of the sudden, this new generation, something changed,” said Ms. Saulsberry, a Black woman. “He was Confederate. It didn’t matter back then when we did it. I knew who they were. … It didn’t matter to me. I knew who they were.”