The Memphis, TN, city council is debating whether to change the name of one of its downtown parks. The park is named after Nathan Bedford Forrest Park. Forrest was a Civil War general but is better known as the founder of the Ku Klux Klan. The plan would call for moving the statue of Forrest to a local cemetery.
The city has been split about the plan with some wanting the park to remain the way it is and many wanting to go ahead with the plan. The Sons of the Confederacy are raising money to help defeat the measure. The city government is trying to move the General’s body as a part of a bid to get International Paper, Inc. to move its headquarters to the downtown area. The park is seen as a bruise on the city.
The State of . . . our past. In the South, it is unavoidable that you will come across a marker of the area’s pre-Civil War past. This is largely true with the exception of Atlanta. The city was burned to the ground as well as much of Georgia between Atlanta and the Atlantic Coast during Sherman’s march in the final days of the Civil War. Although it is mostly acknowledged that slavery and segregation were wrong, we cannot escape the fact that these thing were viewed as OK less than a hundred years ago.
Should Memphis rename the park and move the bodies? A few posts ago some commented that we should re-enact lynchings as a reminder of its horror. If you subscirbe to that logive, then it seems you would also support the park remaining the way it is? To remind us of the South’s racist past?
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