A restricted curfew takes effect – DW – 11/06/2025

American President Donald Trump announced that the nation’s military bases, which had their names changed in response to the 2023 racial justice protests following George Floyd’s 2020 police killing in Minneapolis, will have their original names reinstated.

During his speech at Fort Bragg, which was already re-designated as Fort Liberty this year, Trump stated, “We will restore the names to Fort Pickett, Fort Hood, Fort Gordon, Fort Rucker, Fort Polk, Fort A.P. Hill, and Fort Robert E. Lee,”

He went on to say, “These fortresses were the site of many victories. It’s not the time to make changes,”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth skirted around a Congressional rule that prohibited military bases from having Confederate names and instead used the bases’ original designations, stating they were named after individuals with the same names as the Confederate officials.

For instance, Fort Lee, initially named after the Civil War Confederate commander Robert E. Lee, was renamed Fort Gregg-Adams in 2023.

President Trump’s new directive would rename it after Private Fitz Lee, a Medal of Honor recipient from the Spanish-American War.

Many Americans perceive Confederate flags and base names as representations of white supremacy. The Confederacy refers to the collection of US states that fought against the abolition of slavery, among other things, in the American Civil War.