Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) received the statues of Confederate leaders Jefferson Davis and Nathan Bedford Forrest Tuesday from a Tennessee nonprofit group almost two years after being removed from public parks in Memphis.
Bruce McMullen, the city of Memphis’s chief legal officer, said in a statement that the statues have been permanently removed from Memphis and Shelby County. Furthermore, McMullen said the statues were given to the Forrest family and the SCV to “display them as they wish.”
Paul Gramling, the commander-in-chief for SCV, confirmed this news on his Facebook page.
“Ladies and gentlemen…….I am writing this in order, I hope, to cut down on the speculation of recent events and news from Memphis. Yes, it is true, the statues are no longer in Memphis or Shelby County. They are in an undisclosed, safe and secure location,” he said.
Gramling also asked people to not make any “disparaging remarks” about Memphis or city officials to make sure nothing jeopardizes their “efforts and negotiations that still remain.”
“Please trust that the Forrest family and National SCV leadership are on top of every aspect of this endeavor,” he said.
SCV and Memphis officials had been in an ongoing court battle after the city silently removed the Confederate statues on December 20, 2017.
Memphis sold the public lands to Greenspace, a park-based recreation nonprofit, so Greenspace could remove the Confederate statues. When Memphis sold the land privately, it allowed the city to circumvent the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act, which at the time, restricted ways historical monuments could be removed on public lands.
An amendment was later added to the protection act that prevents municipalities from selling the monuments without permission.
Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle ruled in 2018 that when Memphis removed these statues, it did not violate Tennessee law because the removals were done on private property.
In October, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled it would not hear an appeal related to the statues’ removal.
Currently, a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest sits at the Tennessee capital. As of now, Gov. Bill Lee has not decided if he will remove it.
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Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of Battleground State News. If you have any tips, email Zachery at [email protected].
Photo “Nathan Bedford Forrest” by Ron Cogswell. CC BY 2.0.
Put these amazing pieces of artwork in a better place other than Memfrica. That place is a disgusting ghetto crime ridden hole that will meet its own demise eventually.
As a possible alternative to removing these repugnant pro-Confederate statues, I would suggest putting a rebuttal plaque in large print next to the statue in question to remind people of the horrible things that people like Nathan Bedford Forrest did such as massacring P.O.W.’s at Fort Pillow who had surrendered and had laid down their arms. That is a war crime under today’s Rules of War.
In all wars, bad things are done by good and bad people. In a perfect world there would be no wars, but damn human nature gets in the way. The Lefts attempt at removing statues from the Northern War of Aggression is no different then the Nazis burning of books they did not want available to the masses. Just because you don’t agree with something doesn’t give you the right to make it go away!