Return Forrest to his family’s Elmwood plot

In 1887, a fundraising effort began in Memphis for a statue to be raised in honor of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, who had died 10 years earlier.

The effort culminated in a dedication ceremony May 16, 1905. An estimated 30,000 Southerners from seven states attended the ceremony in Forrest Park, according to historians.

About six months earlier, the bodies of Forrest and his wife had been reinterred from the Forrest family plot at Elmwood Cemetery to the park.

Memphis Mayor A C Wharton said Thursday that the statue in the Medical Center’s renamed Health Sciences Park is a relic to a “despicable” period of U.S. history, and that his office would work with the City Council to have both it and Forrest’s remains moved to Elmwood Cemetery. It is time to move the statue and the Forrests. Wharton’s announcement comes amid calls from Democratic and Republican politicians, including many from Southern states, to remove the Confederate battle flag and other symbols of the Confederacy from government spaces and places, such as state flags and auto license plates.

The massive change of a heart about displaying the battle flag resulted from the massacre of nine people during a Wednesday night Bible study June 17 at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Dylann Storm Roof, 21, who is white, is charged with the slayings, which occurred after Roof sat through an hour of Bible study before brandishing a gun and opening fire. He had told a friend he planned to do something “for the white race” and posed in photos displaying Confederate flags and burning and desecrating U.S. flags.

Roof’s horrendous act in a place of peace was a wake-up call for reasonable people that hate groups and white supremacists had perverted a symbol of Southern heritage into a symbol of intolerance and hate. The flag gives those groups a foundation for their hate. For many African-Americans, the battle flag is a grim reminder of efforts by Southern whites to use whatever means necessary, including murder, to deny them their rights.

That thought was not lost on South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley who, after the slayings, said the battle flag should be removed from the statehouse grounds. She was flanked by some of the state’s influential Democratic and GOP elected officials.

And that’s the context for removing the Forrest statue to a suitable place that is not government owned.

Yes, Forrest was a great military strategist and hero. He also was in command of troops who slaughtered black Union troops who had surrendered to Confederate soldiers at Fort Pillow. He also was a slave trader and the first imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, an organization formed to keep newly freed slaves in their place during Reconstruction.

While it may have been fitting to honor Forrest in 1905, it is not so in 2015. Paying homage to a time and symbol that represents one of the worst periods in American history is out of step with efforts to create a community where equal opportunity and racial harmony should be the order of the day.

Calls to remove the statue are not new. County Commissioner Walter Bailey, for example, has been calling for the statue’s removal for decades.

Removing the statue will not make schools better, advance economic development opportunities or reduce crime here. What it can do is get people to stop talking about it, so that we can began talking about what can be done to make Memphis a better place to live for all Memphians.

Maybe it will let us all start living for the future instead of being bogged down in the past.