Fort Bragg as Fort Liberty? Commission Announces Names to Erase Confederate Ties – By Jacqueline Feldscher (Defense One) / May 24, 2022
Army leaders fighting over glory, not racism, drove the choice of “Liberty,” source says.
The Army’s Fort Bragg would become Fort Liberty under recommendations released Tuesday by a commission that studied whether military bases with Confederate ties should be renamed. The commission also suggests that eight other bases be renamed for military heroes.
Some Twitter users called the choice of “Fort Liberty” “lazy” and “jingoistic.”
However, a source familiar with the commission’s deliberations told Defense One that the suggested name for the North Carolina base, which is home to Army Special Operations Command, was driven by parochial posturing, not racism. Leaders of various Army units, including some in the special operations community, didn’t want the base to be “named for anyone not from their tribe,” and vetoed some of the candidates. Members of the local community pushed for Liberty, which represents a founding value for both the nation and the Army, according to a press release from the commission.
Congress created the commission in the 2021 Defense Authorization Act as part of an effort to address systemic racism in the military. The panel will share its final report on renaming the nine bases with lawmakers no later than Oct. 1. That report is also expected to include an estimate of the cost of making the changes. The final names were picked from a list of 34,000 suggestions made by the American public, which was whittled down to fewer than 100 finalists. If the recommendations are adopted, some of the bases will make history as the first named for women and Black Americans.
