Memphis city council votes to dig up remains of Confederate Civil War general, wife

[rangerrebew]

Memphis city council votes to dig up remains of Confederate Civil War general, wife


By Howard Portnoy on July 9, 2015 at 9:48 am

 

Statue, shmatue. The latest effort to expunge the odious memory of a man who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War doesn’t just end with his sculpted likeness. The city of Memphis wants the earthly remains of General Nathan Bedford Forrest exhumed and moved out of Dodge. His wife’s, too.

CBS affiliate WREG reports:


On Tuesday evening the Memphis City Council unanimously passed a resolution to remove … Forrest’s remains from under his statue in the Health Sciences Park on Union Avenue….

“It is no longer politically correct to glorify someone who was a slave trader, someone who was a racist on public property,” said City Council member Myron Lowery.

The removal of the general’s statue is its own ball of wax. An ordinance proposing that the offensive likeness be removed will have to be read before the council three times before approval can be granted. From there the Tennessee Historic Commission will have to render a decision on the disposition of the monument, though there is no timeline for when such a decision will be made. The next time the commission is scheduled to meet is in October.

Lowery freely concedes that the urgency to get rid of the statue was spurred on by the recent shooting deaths of nine churchgoers in South Carolina by a white supremacist.

Not everyone in Memphis is on board with moving the statue or Forrest’s remains. Lee Millar, a spokesman for the group Sons of the Confederate Veterans, told reporters:


I think it’s disgusting that people use the shooting in Charleston and use those victims to forward their own agenda and join this anti Confederate hysteria that’s going on.

To attack something like that now I feel is just really misguided.

Katherine Blalock, whose great grandfather served under Forrest, concurred: “We need to have a coming together of people, not a divide and conquer,” she explained.

Regardless of what decision is made, City Councilman Edmund Ford, Jr. said there is a more crucial issue that must be resolved. He asked:


Even when all the flags have been taken down and when all the artifacts have been moved, what do we do next as a people?

Good question.

Read more at http://libertyunyielding.com/2015/07/09/memphis-city-council-votes-to-dig-up-remains-of-confederate-civil-war-general-wife/

[Machiavelli]

LocalMemphis.com
July 7, 2015

The Memphis City Council unanimously approved a resolution Tuesday to move the remains of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife from Health Sciences Park.

They have been buried in a park on Union Avenue for 110 years.

More

[Machiavelli]

This is sheer politically correct insanity.

[Relic]

This is sheer politically correct insanity.

We're getting a first hand lesson on how an entire country can go insane. I always wondered how Germany let the Nazis do what they did. Now I know.

[Machiavelli]

In case anyone is wondering, I have zero sympathy for neo-Confederate and White Pride movements.

[Machiavelli]

General Nathan Bedford Forrest Versus the Ku Klux Klan

John A. Tures
The Huffington Post
July 6, 2015

Think that if he were alive today, General Nathan Bedford Forrest would embrace Dylann Roof, the alleged killer of nine blacks in a Charleston Church who hoped to start a race war?

Think again. In fact, toward the end of his life, General Forrest would have likely sought to exterminate those who would kill blacks in his name, or for his "cause," like Roof.

More

[aligncare]

We've lost our friggin' minds.

[Free Vulcan]

As ridiculous and childish as all this is, the Left is expending a great deal of energy to accomplish nothing. But they think in terms of symbols and hierarchy, so they think they're doing something to bust the conservatives' balloon and get them defeated. All they're really doing is just making us stiffen our resolve. If they'd left the sleeping dog lie they'd have been better off.

[mystery-ak]

http://www.localmemphis.com/story/d/story/council-votes-to-move-nathan-bedford-forrests-rema/12440/x-aa6bzx80iy91LMR_yQ-g

Council Votes To Move Nathan Bedford Forrest's Remains
localmemphis.com

07/07/2015 10:35 PM

MEMPHIS, TN (localmemphis.com)--The Memphis City Council unanimously approved a resolution Tuesday to move the remains of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife from Health Sciences Park.

They have been buried in a park on Union Avenue for 110 years.

Council members are also moving ahead with plans to remove the statue of Forrest, even looking at selling the statue to anyone who wants it.

"The Forrest family is solidly opposed to digging up the graves and moving them any place," said Lee Millar with the Son’s Of Confederate Veterans. "The statue just as well. They're opposed to moving the statue too."

There were rumors that the rush was on to move the statue and graves of Forrest and his wife in order to sell the property to the University of Tennessee.

"Has anyone else heard UT is about to do a $500 million expansion and that park is something they want?" asked council member Janis Fullilove. 

"When I made this recommendation I had not heard that," replied council member Lowery. 

The Sons of Confederate Veterans have not said much about the plan to get rid of the statue and move the graves until now.

"This appears to me to be another knee jerk reaction to that anti-Confederate hysteria. Some people here are trying to get on the bandwagon in erasing Confederate history and its just wrong," Millar said.

This battle is far from over. It will require more votes, approval from the Tennessee Historical Commission and will most likely end up in court.