Onlookers streamed into Health Sciences and Memphis parks to see the end of an era: Civil War monuments to Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest and the Confederacy’s first and only President Jefferson Davis would stand no more. Here, young girls stand absorbed by the process of securing restraints to move the Forrest statue from its longtime place of honor and into storage, a form of obscurity, metaphorically speaking.
While city officials worked behind the scenes to determine legal maneuvers to remove the statues in spite of recent state law, Memphians of every stripe participated in actions designed to keep the issue out front. For them, the goal was to immediately remove the statues, while Mayor Jim Strickland vowed to have them gone by the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4. The following photo essay shows a series of events where a multiracial coalition of residents kept the pressure turned up until monuments—arguably not Civil War honorifics at all since they were installed decades later—came down.
Fully secured, crews carefully hoisted the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue off its pedestal, dedicated at that site in 1905.At nearby Memphis Park, the Jefferson Davis Statue was also reinforced for safe removal.
Crews arrived at the parks before sundown, and onlookers were prepared to wait well into the foggy winter night to see the statues fall.
Forrest and his wife were reinterred at Health Sciences Park (then called Forrest Park) from Elmwood Cemetery decades after original burial. For onlookers determined to see removal of both statues, waiting a few more hours or minutes was worth it.Memphis police swarmed the area around the parks as the City Council voted on the takedown process. Not everyone was happy with the decision.Local activist Keedran Franklin congratulates Tami Sawyer, creator of the #TakeEmDown901 movement which picked up a years-long fight to remove Confederate symbols on public property. For her and the Rev. Earle Fisher, standing between her and Franklin, this fight represented a huge victory.
One man secures a birds-eye view of statue removal, while others post up right after sundown, prepared to wait as long as it takes to witness history.
As they say in baseball, “He gone.” Nathan Bedford Forrest never rides again.Community members cross Union Avenue (top) while gathering at Health Sciences Park in solidarity with anti-racism protestors in Charlotteville, Virginia, where white nationalists flocked to protest the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue Aug. 12.
Community members cross Union Avenue (top) while gathering at Health Sciences Park in solidarity with anti-racism protestors in Charlotteville, Virginia, where white nationalists flocked to protest the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue Aug. 12.
Marchers hold hands around the Jefferson Davis statue in Memphis Park. Tami Sawyer’s strident efforts have garnered her the nickname Tami Lou Hamer after the famed Mississippi civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer.
On Aug. 18, about 90 University of Tennessee Health Science Center students protested the Forrest statue.The next day, hundreds joined #TakeEmDown901 in sweltering heat at Health Sciences Park, demanding immediate removal.
#TakeEmDown901 represents a throughline to previous efforts, including a push by Shelby County Commissioner Walter Bailey and former Memphis Mayor A.C. Wharton, who suggested the Forrest monument be taken back to Elmwood Cemetery where the slave trader was previously buried.
Scenes from the Aug. 19 rally of a multiracial coalition determined to get rid of a symbol that suggests Confederate sovereignty in public spaces.
As several protesters faced arrest Aug. 19, #TakeEmDown901 supporters waited well into the night for their compatriots to bail out of jail.
The day after removal …
Shelby County Commissioner Van Turner, head of Memphis Greenspace Inc., at a Dec. 21 press conference explaining the legal underpinnings that allowed his organization to secure the parks and remove the statues. At right, Lee Millar, a descendant of Nathan Bedford Forrest, looks on. Of slavery, he told WREG Channel 3: “Unfortunate business in our history, but it was legal and nobody had a problem with it back 150 years ago.”
A pedestal remains where Nathan Bedford Forrest once stood. Nearby, a sign of a time long past stands with no reference point.The past—a memorial plaque honoring Forrest— and the future—a black girl.
