Here's where Nathan Bedford Forrest's remains will end up
The remains of Nathan Bedford Forrest and wife will soon be exhumed from under the pedestal of where his mounted statue once stood and reinterred in Columbia, Tennessee, according to court filings.
Lawyers for Memphis Greenspace, the owners of Health Sciences Park, where Forrest is now buried, and lawyers for Forrest's remaining descendants filed documents Nov. 20 expressing joint interest that the bodies of Forrest and his wife, Mary Ann Montgomery Forrest, be disinterred and transferred to the Sons of the Confederate Veterans.
The remains would then be reinterred at the National Confederate Museum at Elm Springs, which is in Columbia, and owned by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, according to an affidavit from Bedford Forrest Myers, the greatgreat-grandson of Forrest and Mary Ann. The remains being removed from under the empty pedestal would represent Memphis' final parting with one of its most infamous residents and leaders.
Forrest, the Confederate cavalryman during the Civil War, early Ku Klux Klan leader, Memphis City Councilor and slave trader, died in Memphis in 1877. He was first buried in historic Elmwood Cemetery. In 1904, he and his wife were disinterred the first time and reburied under the statue during a Confederate veterans gathering in Memphis.
"I have seen how in the past several years, Health Sciences Park has become a hot spot for passionate — and at certain times, heated — demonstrations and counterdemonstrations. More problematically, Health Sciences Park has also been vandalized... Relocating the graves is proper because the Property has lost its character as a burial ground," Myers wrote.
This summer, during weeks of protests against police brutality and systemic racism, activists painted Black Lives Matter along the sidewalk that surrounds the empty pedestal, which has grave markers for Forrest and his wife. Neither the pedestal, nor the markers, were painted. Memphis Greenspace, the owner of the park, has allowed the painted words on the sidewalk to remain.
Last year, the Sons of Confederate Veterans also received possession of the Forrest statue that the city of Memphis and Memphis Greenspace removed through a legal maneuver in December 2017. The monument will be re-erected at Elm Springs. "Furthermore, Memphis Greenspace and I have agreed to participate in joint efforts so that removal and reinterment of the remains will be done with due care and decency, and a suitable memorial will be erected at the place of reinterment," said Myers.
After the Nov. 20 filing, the parties will have a court hearing in the coming weeks and then Chancellor Walter Evans would then sign off on a joint order allowing the removal of the pedestal and remains to begin, said Ed Phillips, the attorney for Forrest's descendants. Phillips expects the process to last a few more months.