Activists call on Collierville to remove Confederacy relics on town square
Memphis activist LJ Abraham staged a rally Sunday aimed at persuading Collierville officials to remove markers in Town Square Park commemorating the Confederacy. About 30 supporters were on hand.
Abraham, who helped organize Black Lives Matter marches in Memphis earlier in the summer, announced the rally on social media.
About a dozen people had gathered by 7 p.m. and sat beside a marker put up by the United
Daughters of the Confederacy. Some carried signs saying, “Take them down” and “Remove Confederate monuments.”
Collierville’s town square, a grass-covered city block supporting more than a dozen
shade trees, is crisscrossed by sidewalks that Abraham says form a symbol of the Confederate flag.
“To me it’s simply a reminder of the oppression Black people live under,” she told the crowd gathered around the monument.
Brandy Pride, a 28-year-old Memphian who goes by the name Salamander, told The Commercial Appeal the marker ought to be relegated to a museum after it is broken into pieces.
“This is about oppression of the masses,” Pride said. “That’s why wages are low. The oppression.”
Abraham’s words to the group set off a discussion about slavery, poverty and unconcerned capitalists.
The group began to wind up its discussion with an informal decision to urge town officials to approach the state authority responsible for monuments to take down the marker.
No police presence was observable on the square Sunday evening, although a patrol car was backed into a parking spot giving police officers a view of the group.
Collierville, a town of about 51,000 residents, is the third-largest Memphis suburb by population and home to about 6,100 African Americans.
In October 2017, the Board of Aldermen officially named the unnamed town square Town Square Park to override its commonly used Confederate Park name. Sons of Confederate Veterans members asked officials three years ago to leave historic markers in place including a monument bearing the phrase “Confederate Park.”
During the Civil War, a Union army garrison at Collierville fought four small battles against Confederate troops in 1863 trying to disrupt supplies moving on the Memphis & Charleston Railroad in relief of Union soldiers besieged at Chattanooga. Eventually, Union Gen. William Sherman would lift the siege, march on Atlanta and sweep into Savannah, Georgia, effectively cutting the Confederate army from its supply base and hastening its surrender in 1865.
In 1940, The Commercial Appeal reported, Collierville aldermen accepted a plaque from the United Daughters of the Confederacy commemorating the battles fought nearly eight decades earlier.
Collierville officials began debating about the common name attached to the square after Black Lives Matter protests mounted in Memphis and other cities following a riot in a St. Louis suburb in 2014. The protests followed the police killing there of an unarmed Black man, Michael Brown Jr.
In 2017, The Commercial Appeal reported the name Town Square Park was seen by officials as a way to end the square’s longtime association with the unofficial “Confederate Park” name. “I feel good. Because that part is over and done with,” Collierville Mayor Stan Joyner said at the time.
Abraham, 39, was part of the activist group that protested in June at Memphis restaurants Flight Restaurant and Wine Bar and Porch & Parlor after allegations of sexism and racism were shared. Those demonstrations resulted in changes including Memphis restaurant entrepreneur Russ Graham selling his ownership stakes in restaurants including Flight, Porch & Parlor, Coastal Fish Company at Shelby Farms Park and Southern Social in Germantown.