Monuments and generals
As the SPLC has documented, across the country there are more than 1,700 symbols that honor the Confederacy in public spaces. They include the names of schools, cities and counties, parks, streets, dams and other public works, in addition to hundreds of statues and monuments that adorn county courthouses and parks across the South. Thousands more historical markers, like the one at the Forrest house, have also been planted across the region, many of them sponsored by “heritage” groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy and Sons of Confederate Veterans.
Of all of those symbols and monuments, perhaps the ones paying homage to Forrest are the most controversial.
When the Civil War started, Forrest was one of the wealthiest men in the South – and like many of his peers, his wealth was based primarily on slave labor. In addition to cotton plantations, he operated a thriving slave market on Adams Street (now Adams Avenue) in Memphis, a city at the center of river and rail shipping routes. An 1850s advertisement in the Memphis City Directory touted “at present, Fifty likely young Negroes, comprising Field hands, Mechanics and Body Servants,” along with a “jail” large enough for 300 people.
As a cavalry commander during the war, Forrest is remembered as innovative and highly successful. But his reputation was forever stained in 1864 when his troops massacred black Union soldiers who were surrendering during the Battle of Fort Pillow. After the war, Forrest joined the newly formed Ku Klux Klan and became a “grand wizard,” its first national leader. Despite the massacre and his Klan leadership, Forrest today continues to command attention as a Confederate hero in many corners of the South – in part because of at least 43 public places in eight states that contain his name or likeness.
The SPLC’s report Whose Heritage? found that there were two distinct periods in which the dedication of Confederate monuments and other symbols spiked.
The first began around 1900 and lasted well into the 1920s, during the period when Southern states were imposing Jim Crow segregation. At the beginning of this period, in 1905, a large bronze statue of Forrest astride his horse was dedicated in Memphis.
The second period was during the civil rights movement, beginning immediately after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered school desegregation in 1954. It was in 1955 that the marker at the site of Forrest’s home was installed.