Plan to change Confederate park names causes uproar
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) - The statue of Confederate fighter Nathan Bedford Forrest astride a horse towers above the Memphis park bearing his name. It's a larger-than-life tribute to the warrior still admired by many for fiercely defending the South in the Civil War - and scorned by others for a slave-trading past and ties to the Ku Klux Klan.
Though the bloodiest war on American soil was fought 150 years ago, racially tinged discord flared before its City Council voted this week to strip Forrest's name from the downtown park and call it Health Sciences Park. It also voted to rename Confederate Park as Memphis Park and Jefferson Davis Park as Mississippi River Park.
A committee has been formed to help the council decide on permanent names for the parks.
The changes have drawn praise from those who said bygone reminders of the Confederacy had to be swept away in what today is a racially diverse city. Critics cried foul, saying moves to blot out such associations were tantamount to rewriting the history of a Mississippi River city steeped in Old South heritage.
The struggle over Forrest's legacy and moves to rename other parks highlights a broader national debate over what Confederate figures represent in the 21st century as a far more diverse nation takes new stock of the war on its 150th anniversary with the hindsight of the civil rights era.
Although the Forrest name change had been expected, a simultaneous move by the City Council to rename Confederate Park and Jefferson Davis Park was not. It arose quickly after council members learned of pending state legislation aimed at preventing the renaming any parks honoring wars or historical military figures.
Kennith Van Buren, a local African-American civil rights activist, said stripping away park names tied to the Confederacy or its leading figures were overdue.
"It's very offensive," he said. "How can we have unity in the nation when we have one city, right here in Memphis, which fails to be unified?"
Most of the emotion over the council's action has centered on Forrest. His defenders, mostly white, cite Forrest's accomplishments as an alderman, businessman and military leader. Critics, black and white, say honoring Forrest glorifies a slave trader and Ku Klux Klan member.
Katherine Blaylock, a Memphis resident who opposes the name changes, defended Forrest and accused the council of trying to rewrite history.
"Memphis has always been a racially divided city," Blaylock, 43, said after Tuesday's meeting. "It's been a big clash since way back when. We do what we can to come together and be a community, but the antagonists that keep bringing it out on both sides are the bad apples."
Forrest lived in Memphis before the Civil War, working as a cotton farmer and slave trader. Though lacking traditional military training, he rose to lieutenant general in the Confederate Army. He became legendary for fast horseback raids that disrupted the enemy's supply lines and communications.
Forrest also led the siege against Union-held Fort Pillow in 1864. With the clear advantage, Forrest ordered Union Maj. William Bradford and his troops to surrender. Forrest's men then stormed the fort and killed about 300 soldiers, half of them black. They also took black and white prisoners.
Questions linger whether the Union soldiers at Fort Pillow were killed as they tried to surrender. Northern newspaper reports referred to the battle as an atrocity, but some historians say the deaths were a consequence of battle.
Forrest later became a member of the Klan, which intimidated and threatened Southern blacks. His level of involvement in the Klan is a source of argument, and he is believed to have helped disband the first incarnation of the Klan in 1869.
Supporters praise him for offering to free 45 of his own slaves if they would serve in the Confederacy. They also claim Forrest was reluctant to divide families when he bought slaves.
Forrest died in 1877 and his body was moved to Forrest Park in the early 1900s. The tree-lined park about as large as a city block is just miles from the old Lorraine Hotel, the site of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968.
King's murder is a cloud that lingers over Memphis long after the civil rights leader was slain. Race remains an undercurrent in many aspects of daily life. Not until last year did the city name its first street for King.
This is not the first time Forrest Park has sparked acrid debate. Memphis officials, led by the city's black mayor, rejected an effort to rename it in 2005. Other cities in the U.S. have also wrestled with the issue of naming parks and buildings after Forrest.
In 2008, a majority white school board in Jacksonville, Fla., rejected an attempt to rename Nathan Bedford Forrest High School.
Last September, the City Council in Selma, Ala. voted to stop work on a monument honoring Forrest at a city cemetery after someone removed Forrest's bust from the site. The apparent theft had led to protests by civil rights advocates not to replace it.
And, in December, Dixie State College in Utah removed a bronze statue of Confederate soldiers from campus.
Tennessee also has a state park named for Forrest and a modern-day statue of him in Nashville erected on private land.
The most recent move to rename the Memphis park began in January.
Councilman Myron Lowery proposed renaming Forrest Park after Ida B. Wells, a black journalist who exposed the horrors of lynching and fought for civil rights for African-Americans and women.
At a park committee meeting last month, Councilwoman Janis Fullilove left in tears after another council member, Bill Boyd, defended Forrest as a benefactor and promoter of black people after the Civil War.
Fullilove, who is black, denounced Boyd's comments as lies. Boyd, who is white, has proposed keeping Forrest's name on the park and renaming a separate city park after Wells.
Historians at Tuesday's meeting of the park commission meeting highlighted the ambiguity of Forrest's legacy.
Rhodes College historian Charles McKinney said Forrest represents subjugation and division. But historian and Sons of Confederate Veterans member Lee Millar said slave trading was a part of doing business in the South in Forrest's day.
"Forrest was known as a very humane slave trader," said Millar, who is white. "He never split families. He allowed his slaves for sale to seek their own master."
A committee including historians, council members and an NAACP representative will discuss what to permanently name the parks. Some black and white council members hope the process helps bring people together.
Others say the city needs to discuss more pressing matters such as crime and education.
"I don't care if it's named for Nathan Bedford Forrest," said Councilman Harold Collins, who is black. "He's a dead man."
Though the bloodiest war on American soil was fought 150 years ago, racially tinged discord flared before its City Council voted this week to strip Forrest's name from the downtown park and call it Health Sciences Park. It also voted to rename Confederate Park as Memphis Park and Jefferson Davis Park as Mississippi River Park.
A committee has been formed to help the council decide on permanent names for the parks.
The changes have drawn praise from those who said bygone reminders of the Confederacy had to be swept away in what today is a racially diverse city. Critics cried foul, saying moves to blot out such associations were tantamount to rewriting the history of a Mississippi River city steeped in Old South heritage.
The struggle over Forrest's legacy and moves to rename other parks highlights a broader national debate over what Confederate figures represent in the 21st century as a far more diverse nation takes new stock of the war on its 150th anniversary with the hindsight of the civil rights era.
Although the Forrest name change had been expected, a simultaneous move by the City Council to rename Confederate Park and Jefferson Davis Park was not. It arose quickly after council members learned of pending state legislation aimed at preventing the renaming any parks honoring wars or historical military figures.
Kennith Van Buren, a local African-American civil rights activist, said stripping away park names tied to the Confederacy or its leading figures were overdue.
"It's very offensive," he said. "How can we have unity in the nation when we have one city, right here in Memphis, which fails to be unified?"
Most of the emotion over the council's action has centered on Forrest. His defenders, mostly white, cite Forrest's accomplishments as an alderman, businessman and military leader. Critics, black and white, say honoring Forrest glorifies a slave trader and Ku Klux Klan member.
Katherine Blaylock, a Memphis resident who opposes the name changes, defended Forrest and accused the council of trying to rewrite history.
"Memphis has always been a racially divided city," Blaylock, 43, said after Tuesday's meeting. "It's been a big clash since way back when. We do what we can to come together and be a community, but the antagonists that keep bringing it out on both sides are the bad apples."
Forrest lived in Memphis before the Civil War, working as a cotton farmer and slave trader. Though lacking traditional military training, he rose to lieutenant general in the Confederate Army. He became legendary for fast horseback raids that disrupted the enemy's supply lines and communications.
Forrest also led the siege against Union-held Fort Pillow in 1864. With the clear advantage, Forrest ordered Union Maj. William Bradford and his troops to surrender. Forrest's men then stormed the fort and killed about 300 soldiers, half of them black. They also took black and white prisoners.
Questions linger whether the Union soldiers at Fort Pillow were killed as they tried to surrender. Northern newspaper reports referred to the battle as an atrocity, but some historians say the deaths were a consequence of battle.
Forrest later became a member of the Klan, which intimidated and threatened Southern blacks. His level of involvement in the Klan is a source of argument, and he is believed to have helped disband the first incarnation of the Klan in 1869.
Supporters praise him for offering to free 45 of his own slaves if they would serve in the Confederacy. They also claim Forrest was reluctant to divide families when he bought slaves.
Forrest died in 1877 and his body was moved to Forrest Park in the early 1900s. The tree-lined park about as large as a city block is just miles from the old Lorraine Hotel, the site of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968.
King's murder is a cloud that lingers over Memphis long after the civil rights leader was slain. Race remains an undercurrent in many aspects of daily life. Not until last year did the city name its first street for King.
This is not the first time Forrest Park has sparked acrid debate. Memphis officials, led by the city's black mayor, rejected an effort to rename it in 2005. Other cities in the U.S. have also wrestled with the issue of naming parks and buildings after Forrest.
In 2008, a majority white school board in Jacksonville, Fla., rejected an attempt to rename Nathan Bedford Forrest High School.
Last September, the City Council in Selma, Ala. voted to stop work on a monument honoring Forrest at a city cemetery after someone removed Forrest's bust from the site. The apparent theft had led to protests by civil rights advocates not to replace it.
And, in December, Dixie State College in Utah removed a bronze statue of Confederate soldiers from campus.
Tennessee also has a state park named for Forrest and a modern-day statue of him in Nashville erected on private land.
The most recent move to rename the Memphis park began in January.
Councilman Myron Lowery proposed renaming Forrest Park after Ida B. Wells, a black journalist who exposed the horrors of lynching and fought for civil rights for African-Americans and women.
At a park committee meeting last month, Councilwoman Janis Fullilove left in tears after another council member, Bill Boyd, defended Forrest as a benefactor and promoter of black people after the Civil War.
Fullilove, who is black, denounced Boyd's comments as lies. Boyd, who is white, has proposed keeping Forrest's name on the park and renaming a separate city park after Wells.
Historians at Tuesday's meeting of the park commission meeting highlighted the ambiguity of Forrest's legacy.
Rhodes College historian Charles McKinney said Forrest represents subjugation and division. But historian and Sons of Confederate Veterans member Lee Millar said slave trading was a part of doing business in the South in Forrest's day.
"Forrest was known as a very humane slave trader," said Millar, who is white. "He never split families. He allowed his slaves for sale to seek their own master."
A committee including historians, council members and an NAACP representative will discuss what to permanently name the parks. Some black and white council members hope the process helps bring people together.
Others say the city needs to discuss more pressing matters such as crime and education.
"I don't care if it's named for Nathan Bedford Forrest," said Councilman Harold Collins, who is black. "He's a dead man."
BS. This name changing fetish has been going on long enough. Should all White people ban together and demand that the words "White Bread" and "Crackers" be removed from all products? That example is every bit as foolish as any other name change. Get over yourselves and get a real job.
Should rename it to either Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson.
Yea, they can re-name it Ceaser Chavez Park.
I could be wrong, but I think Forrest Gump says in the movie that he was named after this guy...?
So then let's go after IBM and get them to change their name since they were hands deep in the holocaust. As well as Seimens, BMW, I can go on and on!
 @therandomroger I think Seimens should change their name but for other reasons.
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 @negativerep  Is that why they didn't merge with the Taynes Company?
@negativerep @therandomroger You've said a mouthful....
these people need to get over it and do something constructive with their lives
Gal dang, there sure are a lot of johnny rebs here ????
Yeah I know lets rewrite history, leave Nathan Bedford Forrest park alone.
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The Confederates were and are a significant part of our history.Â
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Look at King Richard, they rewrote history to vilify him but now there may be some corrections
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Think about Sheridan, Oregon want to rename the town to be PC? Give me a break!
It is history it must remain up , If we are lead to forget it, we will repeat it.
I may not this part of history, but does it mean that we have the right to re-write it?
When are you having a party at Sacajawea Park. Within walking distance?
I have to say that the first time I visited the South, I was taken aback by the statues of Civil War generals and all that. Â In the end, these guys were traitors who tried to destroy the United States to preserve slavery. Â By their own light, these may have been excellent generals and pillars of the white community, but I can't see honoring them at this point. Â Were all you folks upset when they pulled down the statues of Saddam, the statues of Stalin? Â History has little reverence for losers.
 @blotto You should read the history before you want to change it.  The Civil war was about taxation and economic competition between the mechanized manufacturing north and the agrarian labor-intensive south.  Slavery issues only came in towards the end of the war.
 @Sweetpea The south has and continues to fight with the northern states (now also western) about states rights since before we were a republic. I agress that slavery was always a contributing factor to the war - it was however, more of a states rights issue in the southerners eyes. Did  the fact that the south was largely agrarian have a sway in thier argument for slavery- I say yes. But the south has also vehemently been for states rights in many other areas that continue to this day - taxation, customs duties, federal mandates, etc. Secession over states rights (to include slavery) was what drove us politically into the Civil War
 @wvboy  @Sweetpea In my lifetime, states' rights has primarily been a code word for segregation.  States' rights was the primary issue thrown up against integration of schools, against civil rights, against voting rights.  The South in general have their hands out when it comes to taking federal dollars.  Take West Virginia as an example, in 2005 (the most recent year I could find data, West  Virginia received $1.76 from the Federal Government for every $1,00 paid.  Poor babies and their problems with taxation and mandates.  Give me a break.  States' rights is still code for discrimination.
 @Sweetpea Taxes? Citations please... and do not cite Wiki... thank you.
Industrial north and an agrarian society. LABOR intensive.. equates to what? Slaves perhaps? Don't forget about the economic downturn in the South. What was cotton going for on the world market at the time?
 @blotto Of course we weren't upset because he was our enemy of the time.  Now, I'd wager some Iraqi's might have been but you'll have to ask them.  Statues are erected by the people of the REGION.  Statues are a local thing which, frankly, nobody else outside that region really has a right to question.  As long as the majority of the people right there in that place still see value in a memorial, who are we to interfere?  Those generals were only an affront to YOU an outsider.  What if foreign nationals came here and took offense to statutes we erected of the soldiers on Iwo Jima? Â
@blotto ... Talk about faulty reasoning.....I'm not sure you understand what you have said let alone understand the South. The South doesn't understand the North either...don't forget, there is much, much more to the South than. Slavery. Get a grip...
They were honored decades ago. Would you be taken aback if you visited a Black history museum and see Malcom X or the Black Panthers feted as civil rights advocates (my words). They expoused hate and murder of whites. Right or wrong - no different than a Civil War general who was fighting for what they percieved as thier rights and way of life. I am not apologizing for either. Just pointing out the hypocracy some in the black community.
It has already reached the point where we US Citizens have little faith our history is being properly and truthfully recorded.... is a shame. The time has come to tell these little special group factions to get lost....if they want to make the world a better place go ahead. Destroying the history does nothing but rile and upset other groups...Gees, GO AWAY for goodness sake...it is what it is...or in this case, it is what it was...
on a lighter note: some towns are thinging of renaming their parks after dommer, bundy and green river killer...you kow so WE have identity with history !  D'OH !
Just curious, are you saying that changing a park name destroys history? Â Is the special group faction the people who still revere the confederacy or the people who are appalled by slavery? Â
 @blotto The north owned slaves as well, GASP! The civil war was not entirely about slavery as it is portrayed today.
@GeauxOSU @randomdude There were many socieoeconomic and political issues that were the root of the Civil War. Coupled with the slavery issues was the issue of State Rights.
 @randomdude No offense randomdude but you're absolutely incorrect. The civil war WAS due to slavery. Although slavery may not have been at the forefront of the issue, if you will, but the underlying issue was in fact slavery.
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At one time, I believed what you did. I have since educated myself more on the war between the states and now have a better understanding of what transpired. Look at the reasons the states wanted to secede.
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Last but not least, I've been to "Memphrica" and I can tell you that I'll NEVER go back there again. I was never treated so poorly in my life until I traveled through there while on vacation with my daughter. Never again.
That would be like changing anything here named after Lewis and Clark. Â History lends a region it's identity. Â Strip that away, and you're just another hunk of developed land of malls and parking lots.
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Ya, cause we know how those 2 caused a revolt and killed almost half a million americans and...what...er...nevermind !
 @sargerator You'll have to expound on that a bit, you've lost me. Â
I'm glad to see the Ministry of Truth is still active. Oceania will rise agian!
The Civil War is a hugely important event in this country's history. The fact that there were "Confederates" only lends color (no pun intended) to the history of the South. If I visit Memphis, I WANT to be reminded of its past -- slavery, segregation, and all. (Of course, when I visit Memphis, I mostly want to feel closer to the King . . . ., and I don't mean Martin Luther King).
And hitler was a skilled leader, took over half of Europe, maybe they should erect a statue of him next to the freedom arch in paris !
 @sargerator A stupid argument, and one which I foresaw someone making nonetheless.
 @sargerator Your attempt at comparing Forrest to Hitler simply does not work. Try another angle.
Rewriting history does not actually change anything, folks. At least this guy has some common sense....
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"I don't care if it's named for Nathan Bedford Forrest," said Councilman Harold Collins, who is black. "He's a dead man."
changing the names of the park will not bring unity to the city.