By the start of 2024, nine army bases that honor Confederate supporters will receive new names, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced on Thursday. According to an independent panel, renaming nine U.S. Army bases would cost a total of $21 million if the stations rebranded everything from welcome marquees and street signs to water towers and hospital doors.
On Monday, the Naming Commission made its final recommendations to Congress regarding the names of the new Army bases. It contained a 17-page list of items with ties to the Confederacy, ranging from the signs for a softball field at Fort Hood in Texas to the decals on 300 recycling bins at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
The report represents the effort by the military to address racial injustice, most recently in the wake of the Minneapolis police shooting death of George Floyd in May 2020.
The renaming procedure was outlined in a statute that Congress passed in late 2020. By no later than January 1, 2024, the secretary of defense is expected to put the commission’s recommendations into action.
The study released on Monday included thorough—and occasionally unflattering—descriptions of the Confederate officers whose names would be struck through as well as the accomplishments of those who would take their place. The only base that wouldn’t be named after a person is Fort Bragg. The name of it would be Fort Liberty.
Fort Benning in Georgia was named for a “lawyer, ardent secessionist, bitter opponent of abolition and senior officer in the Confederate Army.” according to the commission’s report.
According to the study, Henry L. Benning “is on record as declaring that he would rather see slaves liberated and given equality as citizens”
The facility should be renamed in honor of a married couple: Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and his wife Julia, who encouraged the formation of teams that conduct in-person notifications of military casualties and who both served in Vietnam and were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.
According to the article, renaming the base would cost a little around $5 million. The initiative would target anything, even the name of an airstrip and the writing on airfield doors. Additionally, it would include erasing Confederate names from paver stones along a path leading to a monument honoring U.S. Army Rangers.
The 82nd Airborne Division’s base of operations, Fort Bragg, was named after a “slave-owning plantation owner and senior Confederate Army officer,” according to the report.
According to the panel, Braxton Bragg was “one of the worst generals of the Civil War; most of the battles he was involved in ended in defeat and resulted in enormous losses for the Confederate Army; very consequential to the Confederacy’s final collapse.”
According to the article, changing the base’s name to Fort Liberty would cost around $6.3 million. Included in it would be the rebranding of 15 ambulances and fire engines as well as 45 police cars.
American military officials had defended naming bases after Confederate officers for many years. However, following the murder of Floyd and the months of racial rioting that followed, Congress mandated the renaming of hundreds of federal properties, including highways, buildings, monuments, signs, and symbols that honored rebel leaders.
A month after Floyd’s passing, Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before Congress about how the military’s thinking had changed. According to him, the titles of the existing bases may serve as a reminder to Black soldiers that rebel officers fought for a potential slave-owning organization.
The assets at the military academies and other locations inside the Department of Defense will be covered in later portions of the final report, according to the Naming Commission.
