Ed or Julia? Freedom or Valor? Army Base Names Are Changing. But to What?

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — Braxton Bragg was an ill-tempered, largely failed Confederate general from a slave-owning family whose history has been omitted from the training curriculum for troops on the installation that bears his name. But many service members and residents of the adjacent town have learned all about him in recent months.

Still, ambivalence about renaming Fort Bragg, the largest base in the nation, runs deep.

“In a sense, changing the name will be a loss,” said Sonji Clyburn, a veteran of Fort Bragg who lives here in Fayetteville, where at least two streets and several businesses are named after the base, and everyone knows someone who was “back at Bragg.” But, she added, “I do understand people’s perspectives on this.”

Last year, Congress ordered that 10 Army posts be stripped of their Confederate names, a central piece of a larger American movement to dismantle Confederate symbols in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.

President Donald J. Trump vetoed the bipartisan legislation that contained the provision directing the military to change the base names. He singled out Fort Bragg in his objections during one interview, calling the base “a big deal.” His veto was easily overridden in his final days in office.

A commission appointed by Congress to oversee the renaming progress has asked communities surrounding the bases to play a role in picking the new names. The public may also suggest names on a website, which has so far logged 27,000 recommendations. “I will say some of those suggestions on the website are quite intense,” said Michelle Howard, a retired naval admiral who is now the chairwoman of the commission, said this week. “There are some folks who are distinctly opposed and the verbiage they use is quite deliberate.”

The commission, which has until 2022 to make its final recommendations, briefed lawmakers this week on its preliminary findings.

For some communities, the bases are an economic boon. Fort Bragg, which is home to the storied 82nd Airborne Division and the Special Forces, is also central to the identity of a region in the shadows of the research triangle to the north.

“A lot of people have spent a pivotal time in their lives here,” said Kathy Jensen, the mayor pro tem of Fayetteville, a city with 208,501 residents that sits next to the base.

But since change is inevitable, communities have been suggesting alternatives. Some have pondered the names of obscure military figures, historic generals and service members killed in recent conflicts. Several people have suggested women, like Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, an American abolitionist and the only woman to ever receive the Medal of Honor, or Harriet Tubman, an abolitionist who was born enslaved.

Julia Moore, an Army wife credited with changing the way that the military notifies families when a loved one dies, and Alwyn C. Cashe, who was posthumously chosen to become the first Black service member to be awarded the Medal of Honor for actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, are other popular suggestions.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus and other groups would like to see Fort Hood in Texas named after Gen. Richard E. Cavazos, the first Mexican American four-star general.

One suggestion for Fort Bragg is to simply rename it after Braxton Bragg’s cousin, Edward Bragg, who was a Union general. Some see it as a painless swap, others a diversion from the spirit of the process. “There is a lesson here,” said Wade Fowler, who was born and raised here and now runs a small barbecue joint where, on a recent Tuesday, a few dozen troops worked their way through pork sandwiches and coleslaw, as did a local radio personality and an ex-mayor or two. “Don’t name things after people.”

Still, that idea clearly has traction. “Everyone is getting on board with Edward S. Bragg,” said Franco Webb, the chairman of the Military Affairs Council in Fayetteville. “This would save the taxpayers millions of dollars.”

The term “Hood” has been toyed with, too.

“Some people say, ‘Why can’t it be for something else, like the hood of a jeep,” said Jose Segarra, the mayor of Killeen, Texas, where residents are keenly connected to the base. Others have suggested names that reflect a region, such as the Central Texas base, or a military value, like Freedom and Liberty, which has also gained some traction.

“What has been eye opening is that every community engagement is distinctly different,” Ms. Howard said.

Communities have found themselves immersed in history-rich and, at times, painful excavations at meetings with commission members, town halls and other gatherings, commissioners and residents said. “For me it’s been really insightful,” said Jerald Mitchell, the president of the Chamber of Commerce in Columbus, Ga., which is closely associated with Fort Benning, named after Brigadier General Henry L. Benning, who commanded Confederate troops at the Battle of Gettysburg.

“There are lots of people that are really excited about it because of the issues around equity and inclusion,” Mr. Mitchell said. “There are some people who don’t want the name to change. It’s not that they want to embrace Confederate symbolism, it’s because they identify the installation as a place not a person. Their parents met while someone was doing their service at Fort Benning, or their child was born at Fort Benning. We are communicating that this is federal law — it’s going to happen so we just need to be a part of it.”

Residents are learning about local heroes whose names were lost to history, and often encountering one another’s views for the first time.

“These conversations have been eye opening because you never know who is in the room until they open their mouth,” said Ronnie Russell, who served at Fort Hood for 22 years and is now the president of the Innovation Black Chamber of Commerce in Killeen.

Fort Hood is named after John Bell Hood, who joined the Confederate Army at the beginning of the Civil War and commanded the Texas Brigade. One man at a meeting, Mr. Russell said, suggested that a name change was akin to a land grab. “I raised my hand and said, ‘I don’t think we want to have a conversation about land being taken from Fort Hood unless you wanna peel that onion back.’”

Indeed, hundreds of farming families were displaced from their homes to make room for the base in the 1940s, and the remains of members of the Tonkawa tribe have also been discovered there.

Fort Hood has been associated with several brutal crimes in recent years, drawing unwanted attention to the communities around it. Last year, Specialist Vanessa Guillén was killed by a fellow soldier after being sexually harassed, and the poor climate on the base was detailed in a scathing report by an independent Army review committee.

“The long shadow hanging over the name change was how damaging to the community the mistakes of the handling of Vanessa Guillén’s murder were,” said Kori Schake, the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and a member of the renaming commission. “Community leaders clearly don’t think of it is as self contained. They really want something that the community can be proud of and feel connected to.”

Not every community may be as invested. “I would say 75 percent of the community have no idea who Fort Polk was named after,” said Kathleen E.R. Smith, a professor of history at Northwestern State University of Louisiana, at the Leesville/Fort Polk campus. (The base was named after Confederate General Leonidas Polk, not the former president, as some believe.)

Several of the bases were named after a Confederate leader decades after the Civil War.

“In the 1940s, it was a kind of gesture from the F.D.R. administration to further secure Southern Democrats’ support for the United States effort in World War II,” said Nina Silber, the chairwoman of the history department at Boston University. “It’s also interesting, and, I think, also painful in some ways, to think about these Confederate-named military installations being home to many African American soldiers and their families.”

For people here in Fayetteville, the weighing continues.

“I have mixed emotions,” Mr. Fowler said. “I understand the hurt, and if it’s part of the healing process to change the name that’s fine. My preference would be to leave it. But I’m not going to cry when it’s changed.”

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