(The Center Square) – Fort Bragg will officially become Fort Liberty on Friday, at a cost to taxpayers of more than $6 million.
The U.S. Army installation outside of Fayetteville, renowned as the home of the famed 82nd Airborne Division and the Special Operations Forces, is one of nine military bases identified by a naming commission with ties to the Confederacy. The 251-square-mile installation touches four counties.
A Naming Commission Final Report to Congress in August estimated more than 50 assets at the base would need to be modified to rename it Fort Liberty, with an inventory that includes building signage, vehicle decals, street signs and historical markers. The total cost to taxpayers was estimated at $6.3 million.
The total cost to rename all nine bases was estimated at more than $21 million.
Other taxpayer expenses will come from the changeover of local and state signage, such as highway signs leading to the base and county and city road signage, with some federal funds available. North Carolina Department of Transportation officials have estimated the cost to change the highway signs at more than $500,000, down from an original estimate of $2 million about 12 to 18 months ago.
Congress tasked the naming commission with investigating names of military bases under the Department of Defense as part of the Defense Authorization Act, which gives officials until Jan. 1 to implement the renaming plan. The move to change names with ties to the Confederacy came on the heels of civil rights protests following the 2020 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. President Donald Trump vetoed the legislation, but was overridden by Congress.
Fort Bragg is the largest of the bases identified for name change. It covers more than 160,000 acres with a population of roughly 260,000, including soldiers and their families, retirees, and federal contractors, according to the Department of Defense.
For more than a century it was named after Braxton Bragg, a U.S. Army artillery commander and Warrenton native who served as a Confederate general in the Civil War. Bragg is considered by historians as one of the least effective generals in the Civil War, and criticized for owning slaves who worked his Louisiana sugar plantation.
The naming commission received more than 4,000 name ideas from the public and narrowed the list to 100 before settling on Fort Liberty. Republican U.S. Rep. Richard Hudson – the base is in his district – criticized the process for a lack of sufficient local community engagement.
Other naming suggestions included many soldiers and heroes, but officials opted instead to name the base after the military’s most prized value, which is featured in the 82nd Airborne Division’s song and the Army Special Forces’ motto. The Liberty name was also reportedly inspired by a Gold Star mother who insisted her son died to preserve liberty.
“Ultimately, all these soldiers fought in an Army established to provide for the common defense and to secure the blessings of liberty,” according to the naming commission’s report. “The value of liberty is a uniting factor throughout our Army’s history. In its greatest fights, the Army and its Soldiers have risked their lives for the defense of liberty so it may flourish, and all Soldiers should aspire to emulating that tradition.”
Fort Liberty was the only one among the nine bases for change that was not named after a specific person. Other bases slated to change include Georgia’s Fort Benning and Fort Gordon; Fort A.P. Hill, Fort Pickett and Fort Lee in Virginia; Texas’ Fort Hood; and Fort Rucker in Alabama.
