President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he was restoring the names of Confederate officers to seven U.S. military bases. Trump made the announcement during a speech at Fort Bragg after watching a demonstration that includes 600 paratroopers landing on a runway and earth-shaking artillery barrages.
The names would be restored to Fort Hood in Texas, Fort Gordon in Georgia, Fort Rucker in Alabama, Fort Polk in Louisiana and three bases in Virginia: Fort AP Hill, Fort Pickett and Fort Robert E. Lee. The Army had changed those names during the Biden Administration, based on a 2022 study completed by the Pentagon’s Naming Commission that recommended new titles for military installations that had been named after leaders of the Confederacy. But discussion of changing the names had predated Biden’s presidency. Many of those bases located in the South were given Confederate names in the middle of the 20th Century, at a time when southern states were still restricting the voting and assembly rights of Black Americans through Jim Crow laws.
“We won a lot of battles out of those forts. It’s no time to change. And I’m superstitious. I like to keep it going, right? I’m very superstitious. We want to keep it going,” Trump told soldiers of the XVIII Airborne Corps, the 82nd Airborne Division, and the U.S. Army Special Operations Command about his decision to restore the names of Confederate officers that led troops to preserve slavery in the southern states during the Civil War.
Trump said his staff suggested he wait until Saturday to make the announcement, when Trump plans to preside over a military parade in Washington, D.C. marking the 250th Anniversary of the U.S. Army. Trump said he couldn’t wait and wanted to reveal the restoration of the Confederate names while he was visiting Fort Bragg. “I can’t wait. I got to talk to my friends here today,” Trump said.
Fort Bragg is home to more than 50,000 troops and is one of the largest military bases on the planet. In 1918, it was initially named for Braxton Bragg, a Confederate general and slave owner. The Pentagon renamed it Fort Liberty in 2023. When Trump’s new Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, took office in February 2025, he ordered the base to be named after Pfc. Roland L. Bragg who was recognized for his courage during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II.
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