Discussion for article #238538
Discussion: TN State Rep.: First Grand Wizard of KKK Was “One Of South’s First Civil Rights Leaders”
And by “Civil Rights Leaders” we mean “terrorists”.
Would someone please tell this guy what destroying history really looks like- it looks like a Southern education.
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Perfect. Please quote him widely.
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“The very idea of treating someone differently and not awarding them the
same opportunities because of the color of their skin is absolutely
disgusting. Were he alive today, Gen. Forrest would agree. In fact,
Forrest was one of the South’s first civil rights leaders — a fact lost
on many politicians looking to capitalize off the South Carolina
tragedy.”
Andy, if Forrest were alive today and heard you say that, he would have called you a ni(CLANG!)lover and shot you in the face.
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One speech does not a “civil rights leader” make. Especially when you are the Grand Wizard of a racist organization.
Congratulations Southern school boards for creating generations of students who don’t know history.
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Look, its been 150 years since the southern secessionists were defeated and as a direct result the enslavement of African Americans ceased to be tolerated legally and morally in this united country. And only now, all these years later, we are getting rid of the symbols used to represent those that fought to leave the United States in the name of institutional slavery, racism, and hatred towards people of dark skin.
150 years. That’s a good run. That’s a few generations of good people looking the other way. But the the ride is over. Time to join the rest of the country. Time to join the 21st century.
Time to let go of all that hateful shit.
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“I learned it in my school book, ‘The Big Book of The War Of Northern Aggression’’”
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“What separates us from ISIS? Because that’s what they do, they go around and tear down history in those nations that they’ve conquered. If that’s what America is about now, then it concerns me.”
I have a new game, inspired by State Senator John Stevens, called “How the US is like ISIS”, I’ll start and you continue:
- The US has ignored factual history when it doesn’t agree with our life view.
- The US (or some in) recognize the need to reduce or eliminate public education as a threat to political beliefs.
- The US burns down the churches of faiths they don’t agree with
- The US limits the rights of women based on religious dogma
- The US guns down educated professionals when said professionals perform professional acts our religion doesn’t like
OK, now your turn!
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“The very idea of treating someone differently and not awarding them the same opportunities because of the color of their skin is absolutely disgusting. Were he alive today, Gen. Forrest would agree…”
… before impugning their character, beating them bloody, and lynching them in front of their horrified children.
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You know, one reason to make at least a fumbling attempt to be a decent, ethical, honorable human being is that you don’t have to go tying yourself in knots making laughable attempts to justify the unjustifiable. Like for instance, the slippery slope argument, almost invariably trotted out when the thing you’re objecting to isn’t really all that objectionable. The difference between renaming a park and being ISIS is that the former involves putting up a new sign, and the latter involves mass murder, torture, brutal subjugation, terror, and just incidentally the destruction of treasured and irreplaceable artifacts from ancient history. Would you like the South to be well-regarded, Messrs. Holt and Stevens? Then shut your idiot mouths right now, you’re not helping.
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I don’t know, we have more than a few dipshits on here who are comparing people who want this crap buried forever to ISIS and the Taliban.
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I’m sure Gen. Forrest was indeed a civil rights leader; you just need to use the GOP definition of civil rights - the right of any white person to do anything they want to any non-white person.
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Two years after its founding, Forrest was elected grand wizard of the organization. However, he never dressed in costume.
I’m pretty sure the “costume wearing” is pretty far down on the list of most peoples problems with the Klan…
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Forrest showed his true feelings about race relations at Ft. Pillow.
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Just looked it up. I will remember to say something at the family reunion tomorrow.
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Might help if you didn’t look like you were straight out of central casting for “Mississippi Burning”…
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Actually, though I know I’m going to get pilloried, the guy isn’t really wrong. There’s reason to believe that Forrest came, in some sense, to see the light in the years after he gave an order–which he may or may not have had the power to issue–disbanding the original Klan.
His last public appearance was before an organization called the “Independent Order of Pole Bearers,” an organization of freed slaves that advocated racial reconciliation. He gave this speech:
Ladies and Gentlemen I accept the flowers as a memento of reconciliation between the white and colored races of the southern states. I accept it more particularly as it comes from a colored lady, for if there is any one on God’s earth who loves the ladies I believe it is myself. ( Immense applause and laughter.) I came here with the jeers of some white people, who think that I am doing wrong. I believe I can exert some influence, and do much to assist the people in strengthening fraternal relations, and shall do all in my power to elevate every man to depress none. (Applause.) I want to elevate you to take positions in law offices, in stores, on farms, and wherever you are capable of going. I have not said anything about politics today. I don’t propose to say anything about politics. You have a right to elect whom you please; vote for the man you think best, and I think, when that is done, you and I are freemen. Do as you consider right and honest in electing men for office. I did not come here to make you a long speech, although invited to do so by you. I am not much of a speaker, and my business prevented me from preparing myself. I came to meet you as friends, and welcome you to the white people. I want you to come nearer to us. When I can serve you I will do so. We have but one flag, one country; let us stand together. We may differ in color, but not in sentiment Many things have been said about me which are wrong, and which white and black persons here, who stood by me through the war, can contradict. Go to work, be industrious, live honestly and act truly, and when you are oppressed I’ll come to your relief. I thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for this opportunity you have afforded me to be with you, and to assure you that I am with you in heart and in hand. (Prolonged applause.)
Link to contemporary source here:
There are other instances of Forrest stating a belief that black people were not the intellectual inferiors of white people after the war, and that they were capable of becoming doctors or anything else a white person could.
But at the same time, he made his money (all of which he lost) as a slave dealer, a line of work that was enormously profitable but that carried a huge social stigma among pretty much all other whites, rich or poor, a fact emblematic of the fact that the south’s hypocrisy, cognitive dissonance and rationalization about slavery was deeply rooted in white southern culture long before the war.
The reality of Forrest is that nothing, absolutely nothing, about him is simple or easy or clear. He was either one of the founders and leaders of the Klan and the organizational genius behind its growth or a powerless figurehead appointed without his knowledge who later used the office conferred upon it to order it to disband, which order may or may not have been obeyed and may or may not have been obeyed either because he was its real leader or because of his statute as a military leader. He was either directly responsible for the Fort Pillow Massacre, having actually given the no quarter order, and then complicit in a cover up, or else unaware it was happening as troops under his command lost control and then later deep in denial about an event that was a stain on his legacy. He was either a believer in some kind of reconciliation and coexistence and some degree of equality between the races or a guy who had some kind of end of life religious experience or a wily operator trying to doctor up his legacy and hide his sins before he died.
The only thing about the man that seems reasonably clear is that he was a genius with no education and a natural aptitude for war that only benefitted from his lack of formal military education. Well, one other thing clear is that whatever his views at the end of his life, and however it was that he came to get that last speaking invitation from the Pole Bearers, he was necessarily a racist because he was white and it was the 1800s and he grew up in Mississippi so no other possibility exists and everyone was a racist then.
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But he never wore the “costume,” so it’s all good. And sadly, it hasn’t just been Southern school boards (though it’s true that there aren’t many monuments to Confederate generals elsewhere in the country).
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Did anyone else notice the write-up about a lynching under the Arkansas News heading in the source provided by NCSteve?
Edit: Attempted to rely to NCSteve’s post. Stupid iphone.
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He had Blacks who “stood by him” during the War? Cherry-picking doesn’t absolve Forrest or any other Southern leader for what they did to millions of others who didn’t “stand by him”.
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