Yes, the City Council voted to rename Forrest, Confederate and Jefferson Davis Parks last night as Health Sciences, Memphis, and Mississippi River Parks, respectively. Part of it was done because our idiotic GOP-dominated legislature was about to pass a bill prohibiting municipalities from doing that very thing, an act which one of my Councilors, Shea Flinn, delightfully described as "the ironic war of aggression from our northern neighbor in Nashville".
I saw an angry woman on one of the local newscasts saying that this was history, good and bad, and we needed to remember it. Well, that may be true but it is disingenuous by half. First, Jefferson Davis was a traitor and he and Alexander Stephens should have been hung in the public square in Richmond. As for N.B. Forrest, well.....
Let's accept, for the moment, that he had a great change of heart in his later life, (and, frankly, I DO, because I believe that all human beings have a Buddha nature, and well, frankly, that's another post entirely). One has to remember, however, the fact that the statue placed in the Park formerly named for him was not put there to honor his change of heart, but to honor what he did for the Confederacy and all that it stood for as a society.
It is one thing to REMEMBER the Confederacy; every human should be taught about it to prevent it from ever happening again. It is quite another to HONOR the Confederacy, which, frankly, was evil. Period. No discussion. Honoring the Confederacy should cease forevermore.
I don't care if your great-great-great-great-granddaddy didn't own slaves and fought for the Confederacy, he was fighting to preserve his OWN right to own slaves if he ever got the money. Do NOT try to bullshit me with that argument.
Also, don't tell me that your ancestor fought bravely; I am sure that he did. I am also sure that the Wehrmacht soldiers fought bravely, too. It's not HOW they fought, it is for WHAT they fought, and no amount of whitewashing can replace the evil for which they fought, the state's right to preserve the institution of slavery.
Remember Lee as a general who lost due to his own hubris, remember Forrest as a slave trader who started the Klan and then shut it down and had a change of heart, remember Davis as a madman. NEVER, EVER forget that the Confederacy was evil and had to be stopped.
And NEVER, EVER honor that horrific state again. Great job, City Council, it's about time.
2 comments:
"the ironic war of aggression from our northern neighbor in Nashville".
cute. i love it when they show some sense of humor.
Hey now, just because the capital building is located in Nashville, don't go blaming our fairly-progressive-for-the-South asses because the yahoos from Knoxville or Jackson or Collierville want to oppress blacks across the chasm of history.
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