In recent months, Memphis has joined
the national conversation surround the controversy of Confederate monuments. A statue
of Nathan Bedford Forrest was erected in downtown Memphis in 1905 to
commemorate his prominence as a Confederate general and resident of Memphis.
There is also a historical marker, placed in 1955 near downtown, marking the
site of Forrest’s early home on Adams Street. Each monument honors the memory
of a historical figure inflated by myth. In September of this year, after
several protests were held at the site of the statue, the Memphis City Council
passed an ordinance to take down the statue of Forrest due to its offensive
representation. That statue and the marker have yet to be taken down and remain
under constant police surveillance.
The
preservation of history is important – that issue is not up for debate in this
moment. Rather, how we, as Americans, have chosen to remember history up until
this point should be critically examined. I have learned a lot about the myth
of Nathan Bedford Forrest from one of my other history courses this semester. Usually,
I am not interested in the historical significance of racist white men – of which,
there are many that are difficult to ignore. Forrest’s legacy in Memphis,
however, is significant for a different reason. Memphis’s problem with Forrest
so accurately sums up my feelings about Confederate statues and monuments all
over the country.
As
I learn more about the historiography of Forrest’s life, I have come to know
his fan base as the inventors of alternative facts. Forrest’s historical marker
lists him as a wealthy businessman from Mississippi who enlisted for the
Confederacy in 1861. Remarkably, this ‘historical’ marker fails to mention this
site as previously being a ‘Negro Mart’ owned by Forrest in the 1850s. The
statue that stands in the Health Sciences Park, previously known as the Forrest
Park, remembers a prominent Confederate General who triumphed the Battle of
Fort Pillow. For context, this ‘battle’ was also known as the Fort Pillow
Massacre for its bloody killing of over 300 African-American soldiers. The extreme
violence perpetrated against black soldiers at Fort Pillow was also the reason
Forrest was appointed the first grand wizard of the KKK. Over time, factual
retellings of Forrest’s life have been eroded by falsities within works by
southern, male historians attempting to form a positive narrative surrounding
southern men of the Civil War era. Forrest is used to exemplify the ideal
southern manhood, for his dedication to the Confederacy and love for the South.
Accurate information on the life of Nathan Bedford Forrest is not difficult to
find, however, his myth has permeated so deeply into the ideology of the South
that Memphians to this day triumph his life legacy. Preserving history through
the erection of statues is one thing, glorifying the life of a man who
dedicated his life and career to terrorizing black folk and choosing to honor
him for those actions is inexcusable. The statue and the marker, now engrained
in the landscape of downtown Memphis, are blatantly inaccurate and offensive to
the Memphis community. If anything, the debate going on in Memphis proves the
necessity of proper historical preservation and remembrance. To talk about the
Civil War and the values of the Confederate army should be to carefully analyze
the shortcomings of America’s past in order to improve our future actions.
Within our modern understanding of the implications of slavery, we should know
by now that there is no accurate version of Confederate history that produces
figures worth glorifying. The statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest should be taken
down and his false legacy erased from historical scholarship. I hope with broader
understanding of the harmfulness of these statues – an awareness that seems to
be growing as statues are being taken down nationally – we can learn to
preserve history accurately the first time around.
In analyzing the problems surrounding Nathan Bedford Forrest and other Confederate monuments and statues throughout the south we must also be sure to examine when and why they were put up in the first place. Many of the statues at the center of controversy today were erected not to memorialize fallen soldiers, but rather to further the ideals of white supremacy. The majority of Confederate monuments were erected during the early 1900's amidst the rise of Jim Crow segregation,and then again during the 1950's and 1960's during the Civil Rights Movement. It is no coincidence that during the most intense periods of racial tension in American history, whites looked to assert their dominance with these statues. Further many of the statues were strategically placed to intimidate black folk and scare them from moving into white neighborhoods. This is especially true of the NBF statue which white Memphians purposefully erected facing North Memphis, a historically African American community, to signal to black Memphians that they were not welcome in the neighborhood.
ReplyDeleteLily, excellent point that confederate statues (and especially that of Forrest) are not accurate historical markers in the first place. If the people in the "leave the statues up" camp could understand that the statues represent a deliberate obfuscation of history, I would hope they'd agree that they should be taken down. The nefarious way this statue portrays a hateful confederate and klansman as a down-to-earth businessman of the south is tellling a very deliberate different story of history that serves to stroke the ego of whitee supremecists that see the South as "victims" in "the War of Northern Agression." The statue does less to preserve history than it does to actually catalyze it's forgetting: it functions as a sign to blacks that white racists still have political power and that whites don't want to acknowledge their version of the past, and to whites it serves as a piece of false historical data, either blurring their understanding of the confederate message or allowing them to live their already blurred understanding a little easier.
ReplyDeleteI love this exploration of Nathan Forrest, but I think we also have to realize the reality of Myth in our world and our historical worlds. For instance, even though most of the historiography around Forrest is false or is constructed under false pretenses, we cannot deny the actual effects that it has had on ourselves and those around us, our policymakers, our activists, and our populous. While we can accurately debate the factuality of monuments and narratives, we still have to realize the actuality of myth (how it has affected us, still affects us, and will affect us).
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