Man! These people who want to keep honoring a slave trader were on the wrong side of history 100 years ago. It makes me dizzy to think how they do not realize it.
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Yes and no. And I apologize for it being from Wiki with its associated links, but they had all of the info in one spot, as opposed to pulling it from several websites.
1869, Forrest expressed disillusionment with the lack of discipline among the nascent white supremacist terrorist group,[5] across the South, and issued a letter ordering the dissolution of the Ku Klux Klan and the destruction of its costumes; he then withdrew from the organization.[6] In the last years of his life, Forrest insisted he had never been a member,[7] and made a public speech in favor of racial harmony.[8]
Differences with Southern white majority (1870s)
After the lynch mob murder of four blacks who had been arrested for defending themselves in a brawl at a barbecue, Forrest wrote to Tennessee Governor John C. Brown in August 1874 and “volunteered to help ‘exterminate’ those men responsible for the continued violence against the blacks”, offering “to exterminate the white marauders who disgrace their race by this cowardly murder of Negroes”.[125]
On July 5, 1875, Forrest gave a speech before the Independent Order of Pole-Bearers Association, a post-war organization of black Southerners advocating to improve the economic condition of blacks and to gain equal rights for all citizens. At this, his last public appearance, he made what The New York Times described as a “friendly speech”[173][174] during which, when offered a bouquet of flowers by a young black woman, he accepted them,[175] thanked her and kissed her on the cheek. Forrest spoke in encouragement of black advancement and of endeavoring to be a proponent for espousing peace and harmony between black and white Americans.[176]
The Southern good ol’ boys did not take kindly to that from NBF
In response to the Pole-Bearers speech, the Cavalry Survivors Association of Augusta, the first Confederate organization formed after the war, called a meeting in which Captain F. Edgeworth Eve gave a speech expressing strong disapproval of Forrest’s remarks promoting inter-ethnic harmony, ridiculing his faculties and judgment and berating the woman who gave Forrest flowers as “a mulatto wench”. The association voted unanimously to amend its constitution to expressly forbid publicly advocating for or hinting at any association of white women and girls as being in the same classes as “females of the negro race”.[177][178] The Macon Weekly Telegraph newspaper also condemned Forrest for his speech, describing the event as “the recent disgusting exhibition of himself at the negro jamboree” and quoting part of a Charlotte Observer article, which read “We have infinitely more respect for Longstreet, who fraternizes with negro men on public occasions, with the pay for the treason to his race in his pocket, than with Forrest and [General] Pillow, who equalize with the negro women, with only ‘futures’ in payment”.[179][180]
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I hear that Deliverance is a close second for nostalgia’s sake.
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OK, but typo in the third line.
In this case, maybe it is the only book title that Tennessee Republicans can spell.
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Joseph Williams, director of external affairs for the governor, framed the bill as an example of “cancel culture.”
That has been said at times of the Civil War. Telegraph keys were flying in raging flame wars over this issue.
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This kind of thing is an example of why my wife and I decided not to retire to the TN mountains, where we had a nice vacation place for a few years. There are some fine people in TN, but my blood pressure wouldn’t survive the cultural clash with the rest of the state.
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You wonder how Al Gore Sr. as well as Jr. were able to navigate these issues or maybe they just ignored honoring Bedford Forrest.
Sr. was one of the few Southern senators who refused to sign the Southern manifesto in the 50’s and did vote for the 57 civil rights act but not the 64 act. He was defeated in 1970 by Nixon protege Bill Brock after a earlier prototype of the Southern strategy was run against him.
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Somehow I don’t think these are the accomplishments the supporters of retaining the statue want to celebrate.
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Oh, I don’t think so either. It would, however, really rub them the wrong way, wouldn’t it?
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Rep. Lamar is far more generous than I am. I’m pretty sure (far too) many of her colleagues would.
“…I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t want me to be a slave…”
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Is it not possible to boycott Tennessee until they straighten up and fly right? Worked w/ South Africa
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Good people in South Africa asked for that boycott.
Good people in Tennessee … ?
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That’s hardly a prerequisite. One doesn’t have to be invited to boycott a place or thing or person.
And corporations could exert pressure on the state by refusing to do business with it.
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Never said it was that, but it’s a difference.
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The Ronald Reagan Hagar Sansabelt Pantsuit for Men.
“He pulled a Ronald Reagan” when someone reaches an agreement with a country holding US hostages not to release them before the election.
The Ronald Reagan Chair at Hallmark Cards for their current best writer of cliches for their sappy greeting cards.
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Yes, but they won the peace. Ten years of Reconstruction while the KKK flourished. Roughly 100 years of Jim Crow. And then the racists consumed the GOP and kicked out the liberal civil-rights-supporting Democrats to turn the Party of Lincoln into a Fascist White-Supremacist Death Cult. The great tragedy of the Civil War is that the North never accepted that they would have to hang every soldier above the rank of Lieutenant, every member of the CSA government, and everyone who thereafter ever dared raise the Confederate battle flag or else those traitors would never stop trying to destroy America out of bitterness over their lost slaves.
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[quote=“seamus42, post:13, topic:205271”]
for celebrating this guy.
When I was stationed in the old Confederacy decades ago I learned that they loved to flaunt persons and events in their history that you and I would find shameful. Imagine bragging about an ancestor like Forrest?
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Years ago, when Virginia’s confederate history month was in the news, a little-known blogger for the Atlantic named Ta-nehisi Coates decided to embrace the concept. He spent the whole month discussing what the confederacy was actually about using primary sources as well as academic texts.
I think the good people of Tennessee should follow his lead and really lean into the observance of NBF day - discussing his values and behavior in exhaustive detail
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I think a boycott would work. After the pandemic. But there are probably tons of businesses there that benefit from interstate travelers. And products manufactured there could also be the object of boycotts until they stop honoring the founder of US domestic terrorism.
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