MEMPHIS, Tenn. — First there was the fight to get the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue in what is now called Health Sciences Park taken down and now the process to remove his remains is underway.
“When he passed away the citizens wanted to honor General Forrest and in someway remember him,” said Lee Millar, the spokesperson for the Sons of Confederate Veterans. “So in 1899, the city council by ordinance created Forrest Park on that 10-acre lot there on Union Avenue.”
Millar said it was requested of the family to move the remains to the park.
“As the monument was being built the bodies of both Forrest and his wife were moved from Elmwood Cemetery to the site of the monument,” said Tim Huebner, a history professor at Rhodes College.
Huebner said most Confederate monuments were put up in the late 19th to early 20th century.
“The Forrest monument was put up in 1905 kind of at the peak of this lost cause and this sort of lost cause was this very pro-Southern, pro-white supremacy view of the civil war,” said Huebner.
The professors said it was in 2015 – after the Charleston church mass shooting – that a movement started to take hold which questioned whether monuments that had been up for a hundred years ought to be up.
“In Memphis, it was at the end of 2017, December 20th of 2017 that the Forrest monument was actually taken down along with a few others,” he said.
Huebner said confronting the past is an important step in trying to make progress.
“It speaks to the tension I think historically especially in Memphis, a predominately African-American city, a city where there has been extraordinary progress over many years over many years,” Huebner said.