A small town in northern California will debate whether or not to change its name so it's no longer associated with a Confederate general, the city council announced last week.
City officials in Fort Bragg, California put a name change for the city named after Braxton Bragg on the November election ballot after an outpouring of requests to do so, the Los Angeles Times reported.
According to the city's Facebook page, the discussion will be held on June 22. The post said requests for the name change came from both within and outside the city of approximately 7,400.
This isn't the first time the city has been asked to change the name. According to the Times, the California Legislative Black Caucus sent a letter to then-Mayor Lindy Peters requesting the name change in 2015.
The city was founded in 1857 as a military outpost to oversee the Mendocino Indian Reservation, the Times reported. It was named after Braxton Bragg by founder Horatio C. Gibson, who served under Bragg in the Mexican-American War. Bragg would later become a Confederate general.
According to the letter sent by the state's Black Caucus, Bragg enslaved 105 people at his Louisiana plantation before he "committed treason against our nation during the Civil War and fought to defend the defenseless cause of slavery." The letter also said that the general's mother was jailed for the murder of a freed, formerly enslaved person.
The letter was signed by eight members of the caucus and was sent after California banned the public display of the Confederate flag, according to the Times.
"These legislative efforts have fostered a needed discussion about the inappropriateness of any public entity promoting individuals that committed treason against our nation during the Civil War and fought to defend the defenseless cause of slavery," said the letter, signed by caucus members including Chairman and Assemblyman Reginald Jones-Sawyer Sr. and Vice Chairman and Sen. Isadore Hall III.
Peters, who is now a council member, told the Times that at the time, changing the name was "taking things too far."
The announcement from the city comes in the midst of widespread protests sparked last month by the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died in police custody after a Minneapolis officer kneeled on his neck for several minutes.
Protests calling for racial equality and an end to police brutality erupted in cities across the country and the world. In their wake, interest groups and demonstrators in places like the US, United Kingdom, and France demanded authorities get rid of Confederate and colonial symbols, including renaming buildings and removing statues.
Earlier this month, the US Army said it would consider renaming bases that honor Confederate leaders, Business Insider previously reported.
Additionally, "the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of the Army are open to a bi-partisan discussion on the topic," Lt. Col. Emanuel L. Ortiz, Army spokesman told The Dallas Morning News.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there were 1,747 Confederate monuments, place names and other symbols in public places across the US as of February 2019.
Officials in some cities have already ordered the removal of statues and monuments, including in Houston where statues of a Confederate soldier called "Spirit of The Confederacy" and Richard W. "Dick" Dowling, a Confederate artillery commander are set to be removed, according to the Associated Press.
