Fort Pickett in Virginia becomes Fort Barfoot, after Sergeant Van T.Gregg and Lieutenant Colonel Charity Adams Fort Lee in Virginia becomes Fort Gregg-Adams, after Lieutenant General Arthur J.Fort Hood in Texas becomes Fort Cavazos, after General Richard E.Fort Gordon in Georgia becomes Fort Eisenhower, after General Dwight D.Fort Benning in Georgia becomes Fort Moore, after Lieutenant General Hal Moore and Julia Moore.Fort Bragg in North Carolina becomes Fort Liberty.Fort Polk in Louisiana becomes Fort Johnson.In a statement, he says the suggestions “reflect the courage, values, sacrifices and diversity of our military men and women.” The commission will include the names in a final report to Congress that’s due October 1. Ultimately, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will have the final word on the new names. Per CNN, members of the public submitted more than 34,000 suggestions for new names the commission then whittled the list down to 3,670 names, 87 names and-finally-the top 9 revealed this week. Siedule said he expects some people to disagree with the commission’s recommendations but defended the fact that the group “listened carefully to the communities in every case.”Ĭongress created the naming commission in 2021, as part of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act. One invokes an abstract concept, Liberty, rather than a person or people. Three of the proposed names honor white men. “Every name either originated from or resonated with the local communities,” said Brigadier General Ty Seidule, the naming commission’s vice chair, during a media call earlier this week, as quoted by the Washington Post’s Alex Horton and Karoun Demirjian.

The proposed names pay homage to people like Sergeant William Henry Johnson, a Black soldier who heroically fought off German troops during World War I and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, and Mary Edwards Walker, the Army’s first woman surgeon, who ultimately received the Medal of Honor for her bravery during the Civil War. But as the military continues to grapple with its racist history, which came under more intense scrutiny after the 2020 police murder of George Floyd, the country’s defense department is taking a look inward and proposing new base names that primarily honor women and people of color.Ī commission that Congress tasked with coming up with new names for bases named after Confederate officers has unveiled nine replacement options. United States Army bases have historically been named for white men.

Other names for color war