A name change is in process for one of the most notable military bases in North Carolina.
North Carolina’s Fort Bragg will be renamed Fort Liberty, according to a new list released Tuesday by the Naming Commission.
Fort Bragg located in North Carolina is changing its name to Fort Liberty after an independent commission deemed the name Bragg was insensitive and racist.
The base’s commission had been formed as officials considered the names of nine U.S. military posts that were named after people with ties to the Confederacy.
Fort Bragg is named after Gen. Braxton Bragg, a Confederate officer, and North Carolina native.
An independent commission is recommending new names for nine Army posts that commemorated Confederate officers.
Among the recommendations, Fort Bragg in North Carolina would become Fort Liberty and Fort Gordon in Georgia would become Fort Eisenhower. https://t.co/oghpx3pFSj
— The Associated Press (@AP) May 24, 2022
More details of this story from the Associated Press which is the first to report the name change:
Fort Bragg would become Fort Liberty. Fort Gordon would be Fort Eisenhower. And, for the first time, Army bases would be named after Black soldiers and women. An independent commission on Tuesday recommended new names for nine Army posts that now commemorate Confederate officers.
The recommendations are the latest step in a broader effort by the military to confront racial injustice, most recently in the aftermath of the May 2020 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Fort Bragg, in North Carolina, is the only base that wouldn’t be named after a person. Two others would be named after Black soldiers, and three would include women’s names. Fort Gordon in Georgia would get the most well-known name — commemorating President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who led allied forces in Europe in World War II.
Other proposed renamings would honor lesser-known heroes, including several who received the Medal of Honor, the military’s highest award. Fort Polk, in Louisiana, would be renamed Fort Johnson, after Sgt. William Henry Johnson, a Black Medal of Honor recipient who served in the Army in World War I.
Just a few of the most recent Fort Bragg soldiers to turn up “unresponsive” in their barracks, drop dead from a “sudden, unexplained medical event,” or otherwise die from “undetermined” causes that the military can’t or won’t explain. pic.twitter.com/Lq0MuhnmHL
— Seth Harp (@sethharpesq) May 18, 2022
Fort Bragg has had several suspicious accidents in the last several months, the latest being an accident.
The military report added a few details:
The Army on Friday identified a Fort Bragg soldier who was killed in a vehicle incident that injured three others and echoed an earlier deadly crash just days before in Washington state.
Spc. Luis Herrera, 23, a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division of the Army’s XVIII Airborne Corps, died during what the Army described as routine training at the North Carolina base. Herrera, a native of the state, was married, according to a service press release.
The three injured soldiers involved in the incident went to the base’s Womack Army Medical Center, where one was treated and the other two were admitted for treatment and observation, the press release added. The Army withheld the names due to privacy guidelines.
Sources: WLT, Military, Associated Press