Legislative Black Caucus members ask Fort Bragg to change name

The California Legislative Black Caucus has added its voice to a call for Fort Bragg officials to rename the Mendocino Coast city, potentially breathing new life into a debate that had been largely dismissed as silly by residents and officials in the former logging town with some 7,200 residents.

On Thursday, the caucus sent a letter to the city signed by eight of its 12 members.

“Fort Bragg is known for its strong sense of community, natural beauty and forward vision. It is also a very diverse community, with residents of many ethnicities and nationalities. But the name Bragg comes from a darker history: Braxton Bragg served as a military adviser to the president of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis, and as a general in the Confederate Army who led many bloody battles against the Union. He personally owned 105 slaves as he fought to preserve slavery. This is not the legacy that your city or any city should be associated with,” the letter states.

The letter echoes one sent last week by state Sen. Steven Glazer, D-Orinda, who has proposed legislation banning Confederate names from public buildings and places in California. It followed legislation aimed at removing Confederate flags from flying over public places in the wake of a racially motivated massacre of nine people at a South Carolina church. The suspect had posed in photos with a Confederate flag.

Fort Bragg officials say the name change requests are misplaced because the city was named after a fort, not to honor Braxton Bragg.

Braxton Bragg was a career U.S. Army officer when his name was bestowed upon a Mendocino County fort he never visited. He resigned from the Army in 1856 and purchased a sugar plantation in Louisiana. He became a general - one historians widely consider inept - in the Confederate Army in 1861 after the Civil War began. Fort Bragg was established in 1857, four years before the Civil War began. It was abandoned in 1864.

Changing the name would be rewriting history, city officials said. Some residents have sarcastically suggested that changing the name would lead to the renaming of places honoring George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, both slave owners, and the banning of books, songs and streets with ties to the Civil War.

Officials said such an endeavor would have huge costs for the city and its residents.

Fire trucks, police cars and school buses would need to be repainted, new signs would be needed, property deeds would require alterations, businesses and government agencies would need to reprint business cards, and everyone would need new drivers’ licenses.

“You’re talking 8,000 or 9,000 new drivers’ licenses,” enough to overwhelm the city’s two-person motor vehicle department, said City Councilman Mike Cimolino.

“It would be crazy,” he said.

“The inconvenience of reprinting business cards is minor compared to the offensive history of the city’s namesake,” responded Terry Schanz, a spokesman for South Bay Sen. Isadore Hall III, vice-chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus.

The caucus’ letter urged city officials to move quickly. “Now is the time to show leadership. Now is the time to embrace a new vision for your city and not be shackled by its shameful namesake,” it states.

Cimolino said the city would consider the request if its citizens petition for a name change.

But other than apparent jokes, “I haven’t had one person come up to me and say ‘I want you to change the name,’ ” he said.

The City Council has no current plan to address the issue during one of its meetings, he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Glenda Anderson at ?462-6473 or glenda.?anderson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter ?@MendoReporter.