Change Our Name Fort Bragg continues to fight for renaming

FORT BRAGG, CA., 1/20/25 – Change Our Name Fort Bragg, a nonprofit that aims to educate Mendocino County residents about the history of the name Fort Bragg, which has a connection to Confederate Army Gen. Braxton Bragg, will hold a teach-in event at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Fort Bragg Library. 

The event will feature local activist Juan Dominguez, a member of the Point Arena Manchester Band of Pomo Indians. 

Fort Bragg was founded in 1857 by Lt. Horatio Gibson, who had served directly with Bragg during the Mexican-American War, as a military base to relocate local Indigenous groups. The U.S. government ordered the establishment of a reservation for these tribes, ignoring their ancestral lands along the Mendocino coast. 

The Round Valley Indian Reservation, which still houses many displaced groups like the Pomo, Yuki, Wailaki and Maidu tribes, was created to consolidate Native Americans into one location. This relocation caused the tribes to lose their cultures, resources and vital knowledge gained from living on the coast. The isolated location of the Round Valley reservation also cut off trade routes and other resources from the tribes.

Bragg, who was a Confederate general during the Civil War, was also a slaveowner, and was honored as a soldier during the Mexican-American War. It is speculated that Gibson named the base after Bragg due to the officer’s prominence in the military and his loyalty to the Southern Confederacy.

For local resident Philip Zwerling, organizer of the nonprofit and the educational events, the name Fort Bragg is a disgrace to the small coastal community, representing the area’s racist history without acknowledging the Native Americans who originally lived there. Zwerling has been organizing the name change workshops for the last few years.

“There has never been a vote on the name of the town,” Zwerling said in an interview, noting that the town’s name should be discussed by the residents of the community. “Although there’s a sizeable minority who doesn’t want to change the name, I believe that most people do want to change the name of the town. It’s just silly to have this heavy weight that we carry from the Civil War and the Indian massacres.” 

Back in 2023, the Change Our Name group presented the name change concept to the Fort Bragg Unified School District board, hoping to gain interest in renaming some local schools, but the board was mostly indifferent to the idea. 

Around the same time, the Change Our Name nonprofit organized an essay contest for high school students to write either in favor of or against the name change, offering financial prizes for the highest-quality essays. The contest sparked controversy within the community and led to the creation of a Change.org petition opposing the renaming of the town and local schools. 

“My parents, my aunts, my uncles, myself, my five brothers and sisters, have all graduated from Fort Bragg High School, and now my grandchildren are attending or getting ready to attend Fort Bragg schools,” Gary Koski, a Fort Bragg resident and an advocate for the petition, wrote at the time. “The students are proud of their school, as are the past graduates of the school. The school name represents the name of the town in which it resides. The school board should be concentrating on the students and not wasting their time and throw out the idea completely.” 

But Zwerling explained that most people don’t actually understand the name’s origin or who Bragg was as a symbol of Confederate history. 

“If you stop people on the street and ask people who Bragg was, many people don’t know,” he said. “People just don’t know the history. People say they don’t even know there was a fort here, and they’ll say that Bragg was a hero in the Mexican-American War, and that’s what the town was named for.” 

When asked about the implication that changing the name could erase the need for the community to reckon with its racist past, Zwerling noted that he doesn’t believe any reckoning is taking place and that changing the name could help change that. 

“There’s still a plaque downtown that this place was named after Braxton Bragg, who was a part of the Confederate States of America,” he said. “There has been no actual reckoning with our racist history.” 

He said organizing discussions about the town’s history of genocide will allow the community to come together and understand why the name Fort Bragg is a problematic symbol of the past. 

“It has to arise from the residents of the town. They need to get together and have those discussions,” Zwerling added. “Unfortunately, there isn’t much place for people to have those discussions. That’s something we are trying to do.” 

In terms of what solutions will be created from these meetings, Zwerling said he doesn’t know what a compromise for the name change of Fort Bragg will look like, but he’s confident that residents will be able to create a holistic solution for the community. 

“We don’t know how this will shake out,” he said. “But I have some faith that residents coming together, and listening to Native people, will come up with something.” 

Dominguez, the sole speaker at the teach-in event, is a podcaster and activist who is dedicated to highlighting Indigenous voices and providing spaces for them to tell their stories. 

The teach-in will be held Wednesday at 7 p.m. in the Fort Bragg Library’s Community Room and will last one hour. A question-and-answer period will follow the event. The event is free and open to all members of the community. 

For more information about the event, or to ask questions about the Change Our Name nonprofit, people can email changeournamefortbragg@gmail.com.