How the Trump Administration Is Erasing History and Ignoring the Wishes of Descendants of Confederate Leaders

Jennifer Barnhill is a columnist for Military.com writing about military families.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently renamed Fort Liberty, North Carolina, choosing the name Fort Bragg. Not that Bragg, though.

The base had long been called Fort Bragg in honor of a Confederate general, but it was changed in 2023 following a congressional mandate to reconsider names tied to leaders of a military that had taken up arms against its own country. Hegseth, in a bit of a sleight of hand, chose another Bragg for the renaming, this time World War II hero Pvt. 1st Class Roland L. Bragg.

The removal of Confederate names from Army bases was criticized by President Donald Trump and the GOP, who cited it as a waste of money and an erasing of tradition. Today, the GOP is also spending taxpayer dollars to erase traditions, but this time it is taking aim at diversity, equity and inclusion.

"I used to walk past my great-great-grandfather's picture all the time," said Denise Rucker Krepp, a cousin of Confederate Col. Edmund Winchester Rucker who had several family members who fought in the Civil War. "And I was always just puzzled that a guy who fought for the Confederacy and helped lead the Confederacy was hanging in the Capitol."

She and other Rucker family members worked to remove their family's name from Army bases and congressional halls. Trump has promised to undo her work.

For years, the Army had been wrestling with what to do about the roughly dozen bases in the South that were named after Confederate leaders. In 2020, Congress helped them decide what to do when it passed the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, which required the removal of all references to the Confederacy from military installations.

Before he left office, Trump vetoed the 2021 NDAA, citing the removal of Confederate names from military bases in his justification for killing the bill. However, the Senate, in an overwhelming bipartisan supermajority, overrode his veto.

So, the renaming commission, made up of three Republicans, one Democrat and four retired flag officers, got to work. They asked troops and members of the local communities where the installations were located which military heroes they wanted to honor. They identified heroes like Lt. Gen. Hal Moore, who fought in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, earning him the Distinguished Service Cross. They also widened their aperture and recognized the vital contributions made by Moore's wife, Julia Compton Moore, who helped establish survivor support networks and casualty notification teams for the Army. Fort Moore replaced Fort Benning in 2023, and the post slogan is now "Be All You Can Be, Then Be Moore." But it has been reported that Hegseth may not want the Army to "Be Moore," implying he wants to return the installation name to Fort Benning.

Fort Benning was named after a Confederate who killed members of the U.S. Army. According to historians, Henry L. Benning "played a prominent role in leading Georgia out of the Union, speaking before various groups urging immediate secession and warning that the election of Lincoln 'means the abolition of slavery.'"

Despite this dark history, some, Hegseth included, believe restoring these names helps keep modern memories alive and allows soldiers to bond after having been stationed at Benning, Bragg or Rucker.

Others argue that the changes away from honoring Confederate leaders were carefully considered and should be respected.

"This is reflecting the will of the American people through its elected representatives," said retired Brig. Gen. Ty Seidule, vice chair of the Naming Commission, visiting professor at Hamilton College and former head of the History Department of West Point. "It wasn't as though the secretary of defense did it. It's not as though Ty or the other commissioners did this."

According to Seidule, these actions overstep the will of the majority of Americans who neither believe Confederate leaders merit honor, nor wish to be inclusive of a view that prioritizes traditions over denouncing slavery.

Rucker Krepp is speaking out today because she doesn't want to see the work of her family and the families of many other Confederate descendants undone. In April 2023, Fort Rucker was renamed Fort Novosel after a Vietnam-era Medal of Honor recipient, a change that Rucker Krepp says was universally supported by Rucker descendants.

"I do not want that narrative that this is Confederate descendants supporting this. We are not doing that," said Rucker Krepp.

The renaming of bases is only one shift in how the new administration wants to remember history and who contributed to the military.

Hegseth's decision to rename Bragg came just one day before he was booed by military family members during a trip to Stuttgart, Germany, while middle school students at the local Department of Defense Education Activity school walked out of class in peaceful protest. The protest was in response to DoDEA guidance in how it would adopt Trump's recent executive orders that led to the cancellation of cultural observances, elimination of the use of preferred personal pronouns, and a review of curriculum and libraries in order to eliminate "discriminatory equity ideology."

"I hate the message that it sends to the Black kids, that the adults have to figure out if their history is acceptable to teach," said Lucy Meadema Hill, a military spouse based in Italy. Hill shared that Black History Month events and all classwork related to the observance had been canceled.

She was concerned that, without these events, students might not learn about the accomplishments of Black Americans at all. "[The curriculum] doesn't highlight the achievements of minority groups unless there's a specific month for it," she shared.

Other bases have reported different responses from school administrators.

In the small community of Misawa, Japan, posters featuring Martin Luther King Jr. and Mexican painter Frida Kahlo were pulled from school hallway displays, and librarians were preparing to pull books. Military.com reviewed a list of 37 books flagged for "gender ideology," including biographies of Sally Ride and Ruth Bader Ginsburg and titles like "Interstellar Cinderella," the story of Cinderella, but set in space.

"There's a heaviness, at least with my daughters," said a Misawa-based parent who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals for speaking out. "They're like, 'Why are they just coming after girls and women?'"

The parent, who spoke with her daughter's teachers, indicated that they were not acting maliciously, but out of fear. DoDEA employees overseas are often sponsored by the Defense Department; should they be fired, they are not always permitted to get a job in the local economy and would have to move back to the U.S.

While pulling a list of books doesn't mean that they will be banned from DoDEA shelves, the act of pulling them has sent a message that caused anxiety among students, administrators and parents.

These moves to alter what history is acceptable to commemorate are causing concern. But it is not new: Black Americans and other groups impacted by anti-diversity efforts have been at the forefront of fighting to be heard for centuries.

"We think of [President Harry] Truman's desegregation order in '48 and obviously that was super important, but he would never have issued that order had it not been for Black soldiers in uniform demanding change," said Tom Guglielmo, professor of American Studies and History at George Washington University.

Guglielmo is the author of a book that examines the racism experienced by Black soldiers during World War II. He writes that, when faced with barriers and systemic racism, Black soldiers began a grassroots social movement inside the military that forced change.

"The price was enormous and yet they nonetheless show this incredible courage to demand the U.S. military live up to the highest ideals that they were supposedly fighting the war to protect: democracy and equality and freedom," he said.

Instead, we seem to be going backward or at least hitting pause.

"Renaming Fort Liberty after Pfc. Roland L. Bragg is a commendable and reasonable compromise," wrote Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., in an email to me. "Pfc. Bragg was a hero of World War II who earned both the Silver Star and the Purple Heart for his bravery during the Battle of the Bulge. The fort was previously named after a Confederate leader -- a figure who betrayed his constitutional oath and contributed to the loss of over 600,000 lives due to slavery. … The decision by Secretary Hegseth accommodates both sides of the base naming debate."

The base could only be renamed Bragg because there was another Bragg to honor. It is now against the law to name a base after Confederate leaders. So, theoretically, the Ruckers shouldn't be worried. But they are.

"To go back and change the name again, back to what it was, says a lot to me, and says that we don't care about what our future holds," said Joe Rucker, who discovered his ancestors were enslaved by the Rucker family.

"It's OK to tell the story of Colonel Rucker … and how the facility was named," he said. "But it makes an even better story when you can say, 'Hey, the facility was named after him during this time, during this setting.' But then it comes full circle when you can tell the reason for the name change."

It is hard to say if or how the story of the removal of diversity efforts and celebrations of these groups will do the same. Changing base names and removing Black History Month posters on their own could be dismissed as a new administration settling in and making updates, but when military service members and families witness these actions side by side, they are being sent a message.

One of the very first questions I asked Seidule about his work on the Renaming Commission, was about the message it sent. His answer also applies to what is happening in DoDEA. "This is not removing history. It's removing commemoration. And who we commemorate reflects our values," he said.