The City Council off Memphis voted 9-0 Tuesday to approve temporary new names for three parks that honored the Confederacy. The former names were Forrest Park, Confederate Park and Jefferson Davis Park. You might wonder why after all this time Memphis, a city with a majority African American population suddenly decided now to change the names. The reason was simple: The Tennessee legislature recently proposed a bill called the “Tennessee Heritage Protection Act of 2013” that would prohibit
[L]ocal governments from changing the name of any “statue, monument, memorial, nameplate, plaque, historic flag display, school, street, bridge,building, park preserve, or reserve which has been erected for, or named or dedicated in honor of, any historical military figure, historical military event, military organization, or military unit.”
In effect, one could call this the Tennessee White Traitors’ Heritage Act. No doubt that is how many Memphis citizens who aren’t white would view it. Thus the City Council sought to make a pre-emptive move to change the names of the parks now, before state law made it impossible to do so. Unfortunately, that didn’t sit well with one group who is well known for its adherence to the “heritage” of that particularly ugly chapter in our history: The Ku Klux Klan.
February 7, 2013 (MEMPHIS, Tenn.) (WLS) — The Ku Klux Klan says it is planning the largest rally ever held in Memphis, Tennessee.
The group is upset that three city parks are being renamed. Among them is a park where one of the Klan’s founders is memorialized. […]
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 Klan. […]
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?”
A video of the report by a local station, WMC-TV, televised last night, can be seen here:
Action News 5 – Memphis, Tennessee
The Klan spokesperson, who spoke to WMC-TV, refused to identify himself, instead going by the moniker, the Exalted Cyclops. He “promised” that thousands of Klansmen from all over the country will hold a rally in Memphis, and that it would be the largest rally in Memphis, Tennessee history, though no date for this proposed rally was given.
I support the changing of the names of Memphis city parks. The current names honor the greatest treason in our nation’s history, the leader of that insurrection, and a Civil War general who was a slave trader and the founder of the KKK. Obviously the members of the Memphis City Council must feel that the majority of the citizens they represent support that action also, or they wouldn’t have voted unanimously to make the name changes now.
I also support the KKK’s right to peacefully protest the name changes in the exercise of their First Amendment rights, even if I vehemently disagree with their racist ideology. Let’s hope someone in Memphis organizes a counter-protest that dwarfs the turnout by the current iteration of the KKK.
Okay, well if the TN right-wing wants to play that game….
“Nathan Buggered Forrest Park”
“Jefferson Davis Traitor Park”
“Racist Confederate Klan Asshole Park”
Since they would all be named for historical events/figures, the name couldn’t be changed later.
Not bad. They should have a contest.
Forrest Park — > Lost Cause Park
Confederate Park –> Appomattox Surrender Monkey Park
Jefferson Davis Park –> King of Treason Park
I love it. The neo-Confederates in the Tennessee legislature overreach by trying to nail down the heritage. The Memphis City Council pre-empts them by changing the names; any lock-down of names will have to come as as neo-Confederate. This brings out the KKK, or at least a spokesperson for TV.
Will the Memphis Police Department treat them the way they treated Occupy Memphis. Will they be over-policed, treated as threat, and photographed? Since it’s the City Council making the “controversial” decision, it might be. And I hope they are increasing security at the Civil Rights Museum at the site of the Lorraine Motel.
A huge desegregated counter-protest would be welcome if the KKK ever schedules a protest and turns out.
It is so nice that GOP overreach in the South just might start the process of de-Confederatization, something that should have been done during Reconstruction but wasn’t because, you know, white Northerners in 1865-1876 were not certain that black people were either human or civilized despite the evidence of “free Negroes” around them.
Maybe we can finish this job this time.
haha, well, it’s difficult to get more reactionary than this—a proposed law freezing in time the name of every “military” memorial in existence. Yessir, Traditional Confed…er, Americans, simply HAVE to tie the hands of citizens and local gub’mints now and for all the future!
Our New Confederacy seems simply wild with abiding love for its old namesake—if anything, this sort of Confederate Deification shit is wildly on the upswing. The incredible desire to willfully cling to the wrong side of history. And if blacks and progressives get upset about it, well, that makes the action 100 times more satisfying!
The Hitler party also was desperate to establish its nexus with the German past—hence the “third” reich, which procedeedeth from the Kaiser’s beloved “second” reich. This is the mindset of political rightwingers across time and cultures.
Not only will we never get over the Civil War, Southern public opinion apparently demands that the nation’s nose be rubbed in Stonewall Jackson’s unwiped ass more than ever before. As one German historian lamented after attending a conference about re-uniting Germany, “It simply doesn’t matter whatever happens, whatever the nation may be faced with. It is always Hitler! Hitler! Hitler!”
We are shackled to a corpse.
Sounds like a failed proposal for yet another Marvel Comics reboot.
Or some odd fixation on “O Brother Where Art Thou?” and the John Goodman character.
Best response I ever read to the “It’s Heritage, not Hate” assertion was someone who said, “Well, my great-great-great grandpappy was in the 133rd Indiana Irregulars (or some such outfit), and it’s my family’s heritage to shoot any rebel sumbitch flying that traitorous rag.” Kinda ended the discussion right then and there.
That’s a great retort but one that I cannot make.
Closest to that was the uncle of my great-grandfather hiding out in the swamps (rumors he killed a sheriff that I have yet to research) because some rich guy wanted to pay him money to be drafted in his stead into the South Carolina Troops in 1863.
My son-in-law’s triple-great grandfather, on the other hand, was a Unionist plantation owner in Alabama who became a spy for the Union troops during the Tennessee campaign. Northern Alabama at that point in the war had fielded a First Alabama Calvary that was made up of Alabama Unionists who were a unit of the US Army.
So white folks in the South who want to see this issue ended depend on folks like that descendant of the 133rd Indiana irregulars to shut up the nitwit Heritage crowd.
The fascinating part about the nitwits is they geographically are clustered in Border States and old Unionist Democrat territory in the South. And their ancestors were possibly intimidated out of their Unionist beliefs exactly by the KKK, the Red Shirts, and other neo-Confederate terrorist groups.
And for the record, when long after the war RE Lee was informed by an ex-confederate mother that she wanted to make her sons good Virginians, he replied,”Not Virginians, madam, make them Americans”.
IMO Lee would have no patience for any of this Neo-Confederacy shit, especially that done in his name.
I can understand a person being racist. It’s really hard for me to understand how someone could be PROUDLY racist.
You could ask Louis Farrakhan, if not Rev. Wright.
Muzzle first and triggers pulled.
If those freaks get 200 people, I’ll eat my hat.
Grant their permit, and give them a space big enough for 5000. Let the news channels show some nice slow pans, and some wide shots to make the point.
You’re from Lowell, Joe. Wait and see.
The Council should take it step further, and rename everything after John Brown the Black Panthers.
Then let the state legislature take up the No Renaming Parks Ever bill.
I like. Especially as a means of dealing with the no-renaming bill.
William T. Sherman Park has a certain ring to it too, doesn’t it.
I’d be willing to bet a small amount that there actually is a William T. Sherman Park, somewhere.
Somewhere not in Georgia, though.
A Malcom X Park would be cool.
Or one to honor Angela Davis, or Assata Shakur.
Unity will be a long time coming, still.
The biggest Klan rally ever, or the biggest Klan rally ever in Memphis, I wonder.
Anyway, it’s about time these necessary struggles started to take place.
One hopes they will not generate actual violence.
As to the issue itself, Steve, I couldn’t agree with you more.
These changes need to happen all over the South.