Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis is demanding that the U.S. Army honor Confederate general Braxton Bragg, who fought to defend the practice of keeping Black people as slaves.
In a campaign speech on June 9, DeSantis complained that under President Joe Biden that Fort Bragg military base has recently been renamed Fort Liberty.
“It’s an iconic name and iconic base, and we’re not gonna let political correctness run amok in North Carolina,” DeSantis said, hailing the pro-slavery name of the facility. DeSantis said that if he is elected president in the 2024 election, he will change the name back to Fort Bragg.
Braxton Bragg fought on behalf of the confederacy during the Civil War, in which pro-slavery forces illegally broke from the United States and attacked the U.S. military. Had Bragg’s side of the war been victorious, Black people would have continued to be kept as property within much of the country.
Slavery was abolished with the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and since then Blacks and other previously oppressed minority groups have been steadily advancing toward a goal of equal rights.
In recent years there has been a movement to rename facilities that were given the names of confederate generals to appease racists during the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Many conservatives like DeSantis have voiced opposition to this movement, which has also pushed for the removal of statues honoring pro-slavery fighters.
