My Learning Process

Good evening, my name is Carol Furey. I’ve resided on the coast in the 95437 Zip code for 45 years. Tonight I’ll speak about my own learning process as I became aware of the history of this place. I’ve lived most of my life in northern California and it’s a beautiful place. I often hiked over the dunes near Ten Mile River to the beach where the winds and rain exposed shell middens.

I knew there had been an American Indian reservation nearby but I had to read books about local history such as Bob Winn’s “The Mendocino Indian Reservation” and Carranco and Beard’s “Genocide and Vendetta” to get a grasp of the situation. The illustrations in “Genocide and Vendetta” of gangs of armed, angry white men on horseback attacking defenseless Indigenous people with dark skin reminded me of the hatred I’d seen in the eyes of white mobs during the Civil Rights and Voting Rights era. African Americans, even young adults and children, were spit upon, attacked by police dogs, and blasted with fire hoses. Even as a young teenager I recognized the mob’s obvious disregard for human life and its intent to harm fellow human beings. It was that unchecked hatred for Black people and their allies which resulted in the premeditated murders of voter registration workers, civil rights leaders and religious congregants in houses of worship.

In 2015 there was a massacre of Black parishioners at one of the oldest African American churches in the United States. Invited in for Bible study, an armed young white supremacist and racist committed the hate crime of mass murder. In the aftermath of the horrific event, the state of South Carolina took down the flag of the confederacy which had flown over the state capital since 1961. The flag was a visible symbol of defiance to desegregation in a city where African Americans comprise almost half the population. Even the governor of South Carolina admitted: “It may have represented our past, but it does not represent our future.” One month after the mass shooting, the City of Fort Bragg received a letter from the California Congressional Black Caucus. They wrote: “We are hopeful that you will engage your community in a serious reexamination of the historical implications of your city’s name and come to the conclusion that now is the time to end your ties to such a disgraced and treasonous figure in our nation’s history”. Our town made national news when it rebuffed their plea.

As the mother, aunt, and great aunt of African Americans I am fully aware of what white racism looks like and sounds like. I know from my research that in 1857, when the fort was named, Braxton Bragg was already a slaveholder and trader in human lives. He was fully committed to the Southern way of life as early as the 1840’s, according to his biographer, Earl J Hess, author of “Braxton Bragg, the Most Hated Man in the Confederacy.” The bestower of the fort’s name, Lieutenant Horatio Gibson, called Bragg his “honored friend and commander”. Gibson kept in touch with some of the influential people of Fort Bragg over the years, and somehow Bragg’s status as a Confederate general took top shelf in the narrative of his life. We can see that in the fort’s centennial plaque downtown, installed in 1957, and in the photo of Bragg in his Confederate dress uniform on the City of Fort Bragg’s History page.

2015 wasn’t the first time the decency of honoring Braxton Bragg was called into question. The US Army didn’t want his name memorialized either, they wanted it removed. When the Regular Army departed in November 1861 to help put down the Rebellion, California Volunteers, requisitioned by the Federal government, arrived to replace them. The fort, located near a port on the coast, was the supply line to Round Valley and ongoing operations against Native Americans in Long Valley. Shortly after the Civil War began in Apr 1861, the commander of Fort Bragg, Lieutenant Edward Dillon, was “branded with ‘harboring treasonable designs’” before he left to join the Confederacy. First Lieutenant Orlando H. Moore took over the command and immediately upon arrival in June 1861 asked that the name be changed “for patriotic motives”. Moore’s call for a name change was repeated in Oct 1862 by another officer. Stationed at Fort Bragg at the time was Company D, 2nd Infantry, California Volunteers, organized in 1861 at Petaluma, a proud Union town. Their commander at Fort Humboldt, Colonel Francis J. Lippitt, forcefully addressed the need for a change in his letter to Assistant Adjutant General Drum in San Francisco. “Colonel”, he wrote, “I desire to submit through you to the department commander, and if necessary to the Secretary of War, that Fort Bragg, in my district, has long enough borne the name of a traitor, and to respectfully suggest that its name be changed to Fort McRae, in honor of the hero of Fort Craig.”

Lately I’ve read Benjamin Madley’s “An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe” and William F. Strobridge’s “Regulars in the Redwoods”. Further research of primary source documents cited in those works confirm the following: 1) Fort Bragg was established to protect reservation employees and government property. 2) The Army facilitated ethnic cleansing and genocide of Native people on their ancestral homeland. 3) Tribes from all over northern California were marched here by the hundreds, forced to leave their lands. 4) By 1870 most Indigenous people from the abandoned Mendocino Reservation were transferred to the nearest reservation, which was at Round Valley and 5) few families ever returned.

Today we have the opportunity to begin the work of discussion. It’s time to show some compassion, to join the 21st century, to acknowledge our changing demographics, to show respect for the diversity of our population. For guidance we might consider the precedence and success of the Naming Commission process that this year helped Fort Bragg, North Carolina, transition to Fort Liberty.