Posted on 07/16/2015 10:35:58 PM PDT by rey
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 Senator 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.
Request Denied!
Now sit down and STFU!!
I feel like I am now living in an alternate universe and everybody is crazy. Beam me up Scotty, I want to go
back home to normal.
Says someone who is not responsible for paying for such foolishness.
I’m for the California Legislative Black Caucus to change their name ..
to California Legislative Racist Black Caucus....
These people need to deal with history as it is or find somewhere else to live. I guess they wouldn’t consider Africa seeing that it was there own kind that sold their ancestors into slavery in the first place. Its amazing how many blacks do not know their own history.
I was born there and I do NOT want to have to list my birthplace as Cesar Chavez City, CA, thankyouverymuch!
You appear to be standing in a liberalism ion field that is interfering with life signs.
It's impossible to stop following this stuff because it just keeps getting weirder and weirder. Is anyone who's sane in charge of anything?
We’ll change the name when Øbama resigns. Take it or leave it.
St. Petersburg was Leningrad before it was St. Petersburg and St. Petersburg before it was Leningrad. Some comrades fall from favor.
LOL Thank God for Freepers! They keep me grounded and
somewhat sane.
I rode the Skunk Train once.
You know I speak for myself here but, an yeah I have to have a similar skin color some of these folks have but to be honest I have known plenty of folks of many ethnic backgrounds who have served at Bragg and I have never heard not one damn complaint about the name, which leads me to believe it is all ado about nothing. Removing this name will not and I repeat not help these mostly inner-city neighborhoods that are hellholes, or solve what is the failure of the great society, the only hope for them is go back to the values that got them through the hard times back then, if it means acting like a so called white-bread then so be it, for it is better than being dead and also god forbid that Latino’s become the majority someday for if they do the White guilt card will not work and they will be finished, all of them.
Now don’t jump to conclusions with some evidence to back up that assertion
McCown declared the Confederacy was nothing more than "a damned stinking cotton oligarchy... gotten up for the benefit of Isham G. Harris and Jefferson Davis and their damned corrupt cliques.
My late beloved was McCown's GG Niece :>}
Black cock us.
My favorite Nathan Bedford Forrest story:
For the second time, Bragg ordered Forrest to turn over the command he had worked hard to train to Gen. Wheeler. Riding to his commander's tent, Forrest minced few words with him. "..I have stood your meanness as long as I intend to. You have played the part of a damned scoundrel, and are a coward, and if you were any part of a man I would slap your jaws and force you to resent it...I say to you that if you ever try to interfere with me or cross my path again it will be at the peril of your life."
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