Sandy Springs set to change street name tied to Nathan Bedford Forrest
♦ The Sandy Springs City Council doesn’t want the road to memorialize the Confederate general.
Mayor Rusty Paul said he can’t prove Sandy Springs’ Lake Forrest Drive and Forrest Lake Drive were named after Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general during the Civil War who also served as the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
But he’s convinced they are. By removing one of the “r’s” from those names, Paul hopes to eliminate any evidence of the man’s presence in the city, as it takes steps to remove racism while the nation grapples with that issue and the deaths of black individuals at the hands of white police officers.
SANDY SPRINGS —
“I’m not for erasing history and tearing down every monument and changing every name, but we need to send a message that if you want a community of racial harmony and justice,” Paul said.
“We need to understand what these symbols mean to our fellow neighbors, community members and the people we meet in the course of our daily lives,” he said.
The Sandy Springs City Council voted 6-0 at its Tuesday meeting to coordinate with the city of Atlanta to rename the two streets. Lake Forrest Drive runs from Powers Ferry Road in Buckhead to Mount Vernon Highway in Sandy Springs.
Renaming a road requires a public hearing, advertising at least 25 days in advance, and giving written notice to all impacted property owners. The council is expected to hold the hearing and take a final vote at its July 21 meeting.
Several speakers praised the move during the public comment portion of Tuesday’s meeting.
“Mayor Paul, thank you for your statements acknowledging racism as an insidious disease,” Brandy Huff said. “Your efforts to eradicate it shows there is one race, the human race. … It’s a bad time to be a black person or to be a police officer. (Each of) them and their families fear for their lives. Imagine a Black Lives Matter sign in the same yard as a We Support the Police sign.”
Paul, who grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, said his stance on the Civil War and his Confederate relatives has changed over the years.
“My great-great-grandfather was captured at Gettysburg and died in a federal prison camp. I have dozens of ancestors who fought on the Confederate side in the Civil War,” he said. “But I have grown up to realize the symbols I was revering as a child were appropriated for the purpose of generating hate, (and that) means we have lost them as part of our heritage.”
This home on East Fourth Street is among more than 500 properties that will be included in the historic resources survey of Rome’s Between the Rivers Historic District.