Fort Liberty name changed back to Fort Bragg, honors different veteran

Last week, United States Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth renamed  North Carolina’s Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg, but honoring a different veteran than the fort's original namesake. 

Private First Class Roland Bragg, the fort’s new namesake, was a toxic gas handler during World War II. He received several medals, including the Silver Star and Purple Heart for his service, Major Travis Shaw said in an email statement. 

In the memorandum, Hegseth wrote that Roland Bragg commandeered an enemy ambulance and drove 20 miles to transport a fellow soldier to an allied hospital.

“That’s right,” Hegseth said after signing the memorandum. “Bragg is back.”

Fort Bragg was originally named for slaveowner and Confederate General Braxton Bragg.  In 2022, the Congressional Naming Commission renamed the base to Fort Liberty. The Commission was formed in 2021 in an effort to remove names that commemorate the Confederate States of America. The recent change follows a campaign promise by President Donald Trump to restore the name Fort Bragg.

Fort Bragg was originally established to train soldiers during World War I. The fort houses approximately 57,000 military personnel, 11,000 civilian employees and 23,000 family members and is known as “The Home of the Airborne and Special Operations.” 

UNC College Republicans President Matthew Trott said he is pleased with the decision to restore the name “Bragg” to the fort. He said he believes the name has become disassociated with Braxton Bragg himself and is instead representative of the community that has grown on the base.

“I'm happy that the name has been restored so that those people can have a better sense of home again,” Trott said.

Trott also said he supports the decision to name the base after a more modern military figure because he believes more people have connections to World War II than to the Civil War.

Naming Commission Vice Chair and retired US Army Brigadier General Ty Seidule said Hegseth’s decision is still in keeping with the commission’s goal not to commemorate Confederates.

“I think that Secretary Hegseth, while he's following the letter of the law, I don't think that this was the spirit of the law that Congress created,” Seidule said.

He said that when the Commission changed the fort's name from Bragg to Liberty in 2022, there were suggestions to rename the fort to honor other people named Bragg, but the Commission chose not to pursue that option. 

“We thought that it should be fully changed, and so we did not entertain any of the potential of keeping the name and just changing the person because we didn't think that was within the spirit of what Congress told us to do,” Seidule said

Seidule said the base's leadership and community chose the name "Fort Liberty" to represent the values the soldiers fought for.

Seidule said he grew up revering Robert E. Lee and believing in the idea of the “lost cause,” which was the belief that the Confederates were wrong but ultimately fought for an honorable cause. Now, he said, he sees things differently.

“They fought for slavery, and they tried to destroy this country that we love, that I fought for, to create a slave Republic,” Seidule said.

Stephenson Distinguished Professor Joseph Glatthaar said that, although some claim this is not the case, the Civil War was ultimately fought over slavery. Glatthaar teaches courses on Civil War history and American military history at UNC.

“Personally, I find it offensive that we name things after individuals who led soldiers who killed United States soldiers," Glatthaar said. “I have a real problem with that.”

Seidule said that many people feel like renaming efforts erase Confederate history, but he said that isn’t the case. 

“We're not changing the history,” Seidule said. “We're changing who we commemorate because commemoration reflects our values."

Seidule said that, at the time Braxton Bragg was chosen as the fort’s namesake, the South was a “racial police state” in which African Americans were politically oppressed by the segregationist Democratic Party.

Retired Colonel David Moore, son of Fort Moore namesakes Hal and Julie Moore, said he was not very supportive of the renaming effort when he first heard about it. He lived at Fort Moore (then Fort Benning) as a child and said he has a strong emotional connection to the base. However, he said he became more supportive of the idea the more he talked about it and discussed it with his family. 

“If future generations can draw a better lesson, can create better value through the naming of a base that reflects what we want our army to be and what we want the values of soldiers to be, then that's where my attitude changes,” Moore said.

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