When – apparently no longer if – the remains of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife Mary Ann are transferred from a park on the outskirts of Downtown Memphis to a location yet to be determined, it will not be the first notable gravesite relocation in Memphis history. 

In October 1977, the remains of Elvis Presley and his mother Gladys were moved from Forest Hill Cemetery to the Meditation Garden at Elvis’ Graceland home. A century before that, the remains of Union soldiers initially buried at Elmwood Cemetery were transferred to Memphis National Cemetery. And then, of course, there’s Forrest himself, who was originally buried at Elmwood, by his own request, alongside some of the men who served under his command, before being moved a quarter-century later to be part of a celebratory installation at a public park. 

Forrest reinterment plans being made following end to lawsuits

So if anyone finds it unseemly to relocate remains, save your ire for those who did it originally, putting the city on an inevitable path toward unnecessary grief. Say what you will about Forrest, a slave trader before the Civil War and a Ku Klux Klan leader after. I’ve said plenty. But he never asked for any of this. 

Dec. 20, 2017, was a good night for Memphis. I was there in the drizzle when statues to Forrest and his onetime commander-in-chief Jefferson Davis came down from city parks after decades of blighting them. Forrest’s statue was taken up and out in shackles, so to speak. It seemed appropriate. 

While the focus that night was primarily on Forrest, the focus of my own occasional byline activism in the years leading up to that moment was always tilted a little more towards Davis. 

Though commonly mislabeled as such, neither of these monuments were historical artifacts. They were not the Great Sphinx of Giza or even the Liberty Bell, though the equestrian Forrest statue is a fine piece of technical work. They didn’t sit in battlefields. They were political emblems that reflected the values of the people who erected them, of the establishments of their cities at the respective times of their installation. 

They needed to go, but the Forrest question was a far thornier one. Davis’ presence at what is now called Memphis Park felt like a joke. The former Confederate president lived in Memphis briefly during Reconstruction, while Memphis was Union-occupied for much of the war. Stuck along Front Street in the early 1960s, his statue was mostly a monument to segregation. 

Forrest was and is another matter, a major figure in Memphis history. The park that once bore his name, and still holds his remains, was more of a wound. I worried, until this week and a little bit still, that it would end too messily.

The events of this week suggest we have a chance to avoid that. Van Turner, a Shelby County Commission member and the president/CEO of Memphis Greenspace, the organization that bought the park and removed the monument, seems to have steered this toward as amicable a resolution as seemed possible. 

The Forrest family has dropped its lawsuit against the City of Memphis and Memphis Greenspace and is expected to soon file a joint petition with Memphis Greenspace to move the remains of the Forrests from the park to a location likely to be kept under wraps, at least initially.

“The fact that this is a co-petition and the family is joined in with us, that really gets us where we need to go very quickly,” Turner said on Wednesday. That should mean the remains moved and the rest of the monument installation gone from the park by late summer or fall. 

“That’s what they want and that’s what we want. We want that all gone,” Turner said. 

Proposed signs move park further beyond Forrest legacy

What is now somehow called “Health Sciences Park” (memo: let’s consider changing this) is a significant piece of urban real estate, a city-block-sized plot of shady green space along the primary artery that links Downtown to Midtown, now nestled between a medical school complex and the room where rock and roll was born. 

Forrest faithful, generally few and far away, gathered at the statue on special (to them) occasions or to counterbalance demonstrations for the monument’s removal. But in recent years – decades, really – no one ever picnicked at the former Forrest Park. Public installations like the one dedicated to Forrest aren’t only emblems of civic sensibility, but are supposed to be magnets that bring kids to the yard. This one was a “you are not welcome” sign for much of its city. 

The Forrest statue made it unusable space for most Memphians, and it has remained so, perhaps more so, with the monument base remaining, surrounded by orange cones and a chain-link fence.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans lost the battle for the hearts and minds of Memphis, thank goodness, long before they lost the legal battle over moving the monuments. And once that first battle was unwinnable, there wasn’t much point, really, in fighting the second. Once these ahistorical monuments no longer reflected the values and beliefs of the communities in which they stood, there was no longer a purpose in their remaining. It was yet another lost cause. 

So it’s appropriate (crosses fingers, knocks wood, says a little prayer, etc) that this ordeal now seems on track to end quickly and quietly. 

Greenspace taking wait-and-see approach to sell Forrest statue in wake of court ruling

As a non-relative and non-acolyte opposed to not only the ideology Forrest fought for but his placement of honor at the city’s center, who am I to say what should happen with his remains? Nobody, of course, but one of hundreds of thousands of citizens of the city. And as such I’ll send an opinion into the wind. 

Elmwood Cemetery, as a repository of collective civic memory, was and remains an appropriate final resting place. There, Forrest would share space with Beale Street baron Robert Church and Boss E.H. Crump, with blues singer Lillie Mae Glover (aka “Ma Rainey II”) and Forrest’s modern champion Shelby Foote. There is nothing asserted or contested in this menagerie, no moral claims made, only the statement that these men and women existed in the city and should be remembered by it. 

Elmwood had earlier said it would gladly accept the remains of the Forrests back to their original resting place in the Forrest family plot. But the cemetery could not accommodate the statue and its pedestal there. And the subsequent agreement between Memphis Greenspace and the Sons of Confederate Veterans over the monuments bars the statues from display in Shelby County.

“The Sons are pretty much the ones who have the control of the monument. The family has control of the remains. But they are working together because the Sons and the family want the monument and the remains to be together,” Turner said. 

This union, apparently, they are committed to preserving. 

Or perhaps now, like Elvis at Forest Hill once upon a time, Forrest at Elmwood would draw too much attention?

Regardless, someday, hopefully soon, Forrest can again find the peace he denied so many others in life, wherever that may be, and the city can finally, fully have its park back. That will be another good day for Memphis.