Free Republic

10:30 p.m. The mayor of Memphis, Tennessee, says he thinks a statue of Confederate General and Ku Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest should be removed from its location at a city park. In a statement emailed to The Associated Press on Wednesday, Mayor A C Wharton Jr. said he would like to see the statue removed from Health Sciences Park. Wharton said the graves of Forrest and his wife, also located at the park, should be relocated as well. Health Sciences Park was called Forrest Park until the City Council voted in February 2013 to change the name. It...

Memphis Mayor Wants to Literally Dig Up Confederate General and Move Him by Alex Griswold Memphis Mayor A C Wharton has called for the removal of the grave of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest from a city park, along with an attached memorial. “These relics, these messages of this despicable period of this great nation, it’s time for those to be moved,” Wharton said in a press conference Thursday. Most historians believe that Forrest was also the first Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, although he later distanced himself from the group as they became more violent. “This is...

Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr. announced a proposal last week to remove the statue and grave sites of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife. “These relics, these messages of this despicable period of this great nation, it’s time for those to be moved,” the Democratic mayor, who is black, said in a news conference, a local NBC affiliate reported. Mr. Wharton told The Associated Press that he wants the statue removed from Health Sciences Park and “returned to Forrest Monument Association that had it placed there.” He said the graves of the noted KKK leader and his...

Memphis Mayor A.C. Wharton wants to dig up the bodies of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife and remove them from a city park in the latest and perhaps most despicable example of the anti-Southern cleansing spreading across the nation. “Which African-American wants to have a picnic in the shadow of Nathan Bedford Forrest?” Wharton said in a Thursday press briefing.

A bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and an early leader in the Ku Klux Klan, sits in an alcove outside the Senate chambers at the Tennessee statehouse. Photo: Dave Bouche – The Tennessean