I’d like to start off by thanking all of you for being here, especially those of you who are against changing the name. I want you to know I understand it isn’t easy to grapple with ideas that you feel are anathema to your way of thinking. Take it from someone who has had to come to terms with many a hard truth, I know its not a welcome experience. I appreciate your willingness to hear me out.

Many of our previous teach-in presenters have explained the origins of the name “Fort Bragg” and why it is so offensive to the original inhabitants of this land, to people descended from slaves, to those who served in the armed forces, as well as many others. If any of you missed those talks, let me refer you to the History section of our website, Change Our Name Fort Bragg dot com where we have organized many resources to learn about the circumstances of the founding of our town.

In this talk I’d like to do something different. I want to use the words of James Baldwin to help us address some of the issues that have been brought up in previous meetings.

James Baldwin was a novelist, essayist and public intellectual who was one of the most powerful voices of the Black and LGBTQ experience in America. His first novel Go Tell It On The Mountain is considered one of the 100 best English language books of the last century. Originally from New York, he left for France where he settled for 9 years before deciding he needed to come home to participate in the civil rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s. He specifically said he did not hate white people like his father had, he knew white people, had an important early teacher who was white and had white friends.

Because of his position as an outsider to the dominant culture, he was able to analyze the psychology of many different cultures and understand the preconceived notions of each. What does that have to do with Fort Bragg, you might ask? I want to use his framing, not to suggest those against the name change are “racist” but to suggest we use his words to attempt to see things more clearly from another’s point of view.

James Baldwin in Nothing Personal writes, “It is of course, in the very nature of a myth that those who are its victims, and at the same time it’s perpetrators, should, by virtue of these two facts, be rendered unable to examine the myth, or even to suspect, much less recognize, that it is a myth that controls and blasts their lives.”

What is the myth of the name “Fort Bragg” that people are clinging to so tightly? Even those opposed to the name change don’t support, either the original genocidal circumstances of the fort, nor the racism and incompetence of Bragg.

What is your story about this town? Is it a story about tough loggers, millworkers and fisherman who built this town? Or is it the freedom loving, ‘live and let live' folks who came here looking for a place to do their own thing? Maybe it’s something else, but whatever it is, it will not be erased by changing the name. All that work is real, tangible and deserves to be recognized with a name that would honor the people who forged a meaningful life from this frontier town. The “myth” is that without the name all that work will be forgotten, even though its the name itself that denigrates those very efforts with its disgraceful symbolism.

In his “Letter to my Nephew,” Baldwin said, “Many of them indeed know better, but as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know. To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger. In this case, the danger in the minds and hearts of most white Americans is the loss of their identity.”

Obviously, some people who grew up here may identify with the name, and feel there is no need to change. Its been the name for over 100 years, it’s what you, your parents and grandparents called this place. Most of them had no idea about its historical origins because it was never taught, and that was intentional. Now that we DO understand the where it comes from, can’t we act to find a new name that better reflects the diversity of this community? Can sentimentality really outweigh the despicable symbolism? What WOULD it take for people to re-examine their attachment? I’m not suggesting forgetting the past, I’m suggesting choosing a different name that aligns with the values this community holds so dear.

Again in Letter Baldwin says, “It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.” Then continues, “You must accept them and accept them with love, for these innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it.”

People say changing the name would be erasing history, but how could that be when the history was never taught? By 1900 the Native American experience in California from 1850-1870 was already being silenced in the national memory of the United States. Until I started reading, I certainly didn’t know about the massacres, starvation and enslavement that occurred right here, nor that the native population of California declined by 90% in 30 years, from 1850-1880. The Mendocino reservation started in 1856 and plays a role in that tragedy. Since so many people weren’t aware of it, actually, this whole effort to change the name has probably been the single most effective technique to educate our community about this very history.

Neither is this some sort of superficial “Cancel Culture” issue. The implications of the use of such a toxic name run much deeper than some want to realize. Now that this history is surfacing in the wider community, do we still have to cling to a name that honors the two most shameful aspects of the founding of our nation, the systematic murder and imprisonment of indigenous people and the enslavement of black people?

Baldwin wrote in Nothing Personal, “We live by lies, …about our very natures. The lie has penetrated to our most private moments and the most secret chambers in our hearts. Nothing more sinister can happen… [because] when it happens it means the people are caught in a kind of vacuum between their present and their past; the romanticized, …past, and the denied and dishonored present. It is a crisis of identity and in such a crisis,… it becomes absolutely indispensable to discover or invent,… the stranger, the barbarian, who is responsible for our confusion and our pain.”

We here at Change Our Name have heard it said that the people in favor of the change are all recent arrivals who have barely landed and now want to upend decades of history. Nothing could be further from the truth. Many people who want to change the name grew up here or have lived here 30, 40 even 50 years. We are residents of the coast, though not all of us live within the city limits. Our future depends on a healthy and vibrant community that treats all members of our diverse neighborhood with the respect they deserve. At NO time have we advocated boycotting businesses with Fort Bragg Forever signs, we want everyone in the community, even those opposed to the name change, to thrive financially.

In I Am Not Your Negro Baldwin says, “History is not the past, it is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history.. I attest to this, the world is not white, it never was white, cannot be white. White is a metaphor for power and is simply a way of describing Chase Manhattan Bank.”

If the past is present, should we keep the name so as to continue to carry the shame it represents? I reject that entirely because I agree with the FBFrs that none of us here today are guilty for the sins of the past. Another myth is that the white settlers of California brought democracy and the rule of law but what in fact they did was use the trappings of government to give themselves permission to do as they pleased, which was to eliminate the indigenous people from the land. Keeping the name is just another way of capitulating to the establishment and never acknowledging the diversity of the history of our town.

Changing the name is an important symbolic step toward rectifying the historical damages perpetrated on native tribes, but by no means should it be the only step. Change Our Name supports the Citizens Commission Consensus Recommendations, the first two being the most important.. land back to local coastal tribes and recognition of their sovereignty and stewardship of the land. Those essential efforts have begun the TRUE reparations our local tribes deserve.

Let me close with one last Baldwin quote from his essay, As Much Of The Truth As One Can Bear, “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”