Bragg was born into slavery in Warrenton, North Carolina, in 1863, during the American Civil War, and baptised at Emmanuel Episcopal Church.

[citation needed] In 1867, Major Giles Buckner Cooke (a Virginia Military Institute graduate and former Confederate army officer on the staff of General Robert E. Lee who after the war began studying to become an Episcopal priest) had started a Sunday school for freed slaves at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Petersburg.

[2] Two other Confederate veterans, Alexander W. Weddell and future bishop Robert Atkinson Gibson, had done likewise at Grace Episcopal Church the previous year.

[citation needed] As a child young Bragg delivered newspapers and established relationships with the city's white leaders, including John Hampden Chamberlayne, editor of the Petersburg Index, and political ally of William Mahone, who had founded the Readjuster Party and appealed for the support of black voters.

A change in the rector at St. Stephens also allowed Bragg to resume his theological studies at the Bishop Payne Divinity School, from which he graduated in 1886.

However, Virginia increased its discrimination against black clergy in 1899, restricting their votes in the diocesan council to the Convocation of the Missionary Jurisdiction, over the objections of Bragg and others.

Under Bragg's leadership, the struggling congregation of 63 again became self-supporting, tripling in size and building a new structure on Park Avenue and Preston Streets by 1901.

Bragg also continued publishing the monthly Church Advocate, wrote several books as listed below, and worked to develop black ministers (fostering more than 20 vocations, including the Rev.

Bragg fought against restricting the church's mission work to overseas activities, arguing that the denomination also needed to foster African American congregations.

He served as secretary and historiographer of the Conference of Church Workers among Colored People—which lobbied, among other things, for the election and consecration of black bishops.