What is Fort Bragg? Hegseth restores Army base name from Fort Liberty.

 The base was renamed Fort Liberty in 2023 to disassociate from Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg. It’s now named after Roland L. Bragg, a World War II hero.Outside Fayetteville, North Carolina, lies one of the largest military bases in the world. You may know it as Fort Bragg, as it was named in 1922, or Fort Liberty, as it was renamed in 2023 to disassociate it from the Confederate general it was named after. On Monday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth restored its name to Fort Bragg but said it would honor a World War II hero who shares the same last name.

Here’s what to know about Fort Bragg and the controversy surrounding its name.

The facts

• The base was originally named after Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg, a plantation owner who enslaved people.
• Its name was changed from Fort Bragg to Fort Liberty in 2023 as part of efforts to rename military installations honoring Confederate officers.
• On Monday, Hegseth directed the Army to rename the base Fort Roland L. Bragg in honor of “a World War II hero who earned the Silver Star and Purple Heart for his exceptional courage during the Battle of the Bulge,” the Pentagon said. Pfc. Roland Bragg was an Army paratrooper and mechanic who was credited with saving a wounded soldier’s life by driving him in a stolen German ambulance to an Allied hospital in Belgium.
• President Donald Trump pledged to restore the base’s original name during the 2024 campaign.

 

What is Fort Bragg?

The military installation is home to the 82nd Airborne Division and the Army Special Operations Command.

Established in 1918 as Camp Bragg, the facility was upgraded in 1922 and renamed Fort Bragg.

It is now one of the largest military complexes in the world, according to the Army, hosting some 57,000 service members, 11,000 civilian employees and 23,000 family members.

Who was Braxton Bragg?

Braxton Bragg, after whom the military base was originally named, was a sugar plantation owner who enslaved 105 people. He described Abraham Lincoln as a “despotic ruler,” and biographers have noted Bragg’s racism.He was also “considered one of the worst generals of the Civil War,” since “most of the battles he was involved in ended in defeat,” according to a 2022 report by the commission appointed by Congress to rename the military installations.

“Bragg was temperamental, a harsh disciplinarian, and widely disliked in the pre-Civil War U.S. Army and within the Confederate Army by peers and subordinates alike throughout his career,” the report said.

What prompted the name change to Fort Liberty in 2023?

On Jan. 1, 2021, months after the murder of George Floyd sparked mass protests and public scrutiny of Confederate symbols, Congress passed a defense authorization bill that included an order for the Pentagon to change the names of installations honoring members of the Confederacy within three years.

Trump, then in his first term, vetoed the bill, but it had bipartisan support. Other opponents of the legislation included Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), both of whom blamed the move on “political correctness.”