The Forrest for the Trees
If there’s one thing you can always count on, people will overplay their hand.
Following Dylann Roof’s murder of nine parishioners at the Charlestown, South Carolina Emanuel A.M.E. Church, grief and anger coalesced around an offensive symbol of Southern culture - the Confederate flag. (My thoughts about the Confederate flag can be found here. Spoiler alert: I’m not a fan.)
Attention was drawn to the flag for a couple of reasons. First were photos of Roof posing with the Confederate flag, while also burning an American flag. Dylann Roof was not a subtle guy. The second reason for the attention was the Confederate flag flying over South Carolina’s Capitol grounds. While the U.S. and state flags were lowered to half-staff in honor of the fallen, the Confederate flag continued to fly defiantly at full-staff. Southern traditions are not subtle traditions.
It was claimed the Confederate flag was kept at full-staff because it couldn’t be lowered to half-staff - the flagpole mechanism didn’t allow for it. Which is, of course, complete and utter bullshit. You’re reading this on a device which connects you to damn near everyone on Earth in microseconds, and provides access to the entirety of man’s collected wisdom at your fingertips - yet South Carolina wants you to believe they can’t figure out how to tie a knot.
But the image of the Confederate flag flying rebelliously over the South Carolina Capitol grounds raised a more pertinent question: WHY was it there in the first place? The Confederate flag is the symbol of a traitorous and failed uprising against the United States of America which threw the country into five years of horrendous war at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. (If you disagree with that last sentence? You might want to leave now. It’s not going to get any better for you from here.)
The fact that no one had a good answer as to why the Confederate flag was flying over U.S. government property led to a groundswell of support to remove it. (And by the way, there were plenty of answers why the flag should be kept up - just no good ones.) In a rare display of cultural sensitivity, political expedience and overdue good sense, South Carolina lawmakers ordered the flag removed from the Capitol grounds. And so it was, to much rejoicing.
And, of course, also much teeth-gnashing and name-calling and hate-mongering. Many on the right were furious about the Confederate flag being banned. They rushed to purchase back-up copies of the ol’ Stars and Bars lest theirs wear out from overuse. My favorite story involved the man who bought every copy of Gone With the Wind from his local Barnes & Noble, because he heard the government was going to ban the film. I’d imagine this brainiac will find a way to blame the film not being banned on the government, too. Enjoy your shiny new DVD’s, everyone on this guy’s Christmas list!
All these people prove is that reading past the headline is hard. The conversation isn’t about banning the Confederate flag, it’s about removing it from official U.S. installations. As much as I despise the Confederate flag and all it stands for, banning it would be un-American. It’s that whole pesky ‘freedom’ thing again. You know, freedom - that thing everyone loves until it’s granted to someone who says something you don’t agree with? Which is why only idiots and reactionaries advocate banning the flag completely.
Which brings us to Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Well, his bones, anyway.
There’s a move afoot to remove a statue of Forrest - a famous Lieutenant General in the Confederate Army - from Health Sciences Park (formerly Forrest Park) in Memphis, Tennessee, along with exhuming the remains of Forrest and his wife which are buried nearby.
Pump the brakes, folks.
Let’s get the statue out of the way first. Yeah, go ahead and remove it - fuck that thing. A statue glorifies, and Forrest is not someone who should be glorified in any way. Aside from the whole ‘traitor who fought against the United States’ thing, Forrest was exceptionally brutal and racist in a culture and at a time where brutality and racism were the norm. Don’t believe me? Read about the massacre at Fort Pillow in 1864, which Forrest presided over. Union troops - many of them black - were massacred after surrendering to Forrest and his troops, as were fleeing black civilians. In An Unerring Fire, historian Richard Fuchs wrote, "The affair at Fort Pillow was simply an orgy of death, a mass lynching to satisfy the basest of conduct – intentional murder – for the vilest of reasons – racism and personal enmity."
Hey, speaking of which! After the war Forrest was one of the earliest members of this new Southern social club. Maybe you’ve heard of it - the Ku Klux Klan. In fact, he may even have been the very first Grand Wizard. Now, let’s be clear about what the early KKK was. These days we think of the Klan primarily as a bunch of racist clowns in sheets who like to parade through city streets in an effort to raise the telegenic ire of citizens. The early Klan was primarily a bunch of racist clowns in sheets who liked to murder and terrorize people. Black people, to be specific. And anyone who might have been seen as ‘soft on the blacks.’
So that statue? Yeah, pull that thing down, smash it into a million pieces and use it for… hell, anything. I don’t care. Just get rid of it.
Ah, but what about the bones of Forrest and his wife?
I say leave ‘em right where they are. I say create a monument around the graves.
Huh?
Let me explain. First, I think there’s a line where seeking justice can simply become recrimination. And maybe digging up the corpses of history’s villains and tossing them aside is as good an example of that line as I can imagine. This is exactly what I meant when I said you can always count on people to overplay their hand. We’re in a heady moment where, for the first time in memory, the offensive ‘Lost Cause’ attitude that still pervades parts of Southern life and culture has been caught in the glare of the national spotlight and found to be archaic, ignorant, petty, and racist. As a result, there have been some symbolic victories - such as the removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina Capitol.
So, flush with victory, people begin looking for other things that can be eliminated. The statue of Forrest is one example of something that can and should absolutely go. But in their rush to destroy all vestiges of the Confederacy’s shameful history, they go too far.
Because in the words of George Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
You can’t simply delete parts of the past you don’t like. To do so is to betray those who fought to overcome the injustices, atrocities, holocausts and horrors the human race is so sadly capable of. To erase all traces of the Confederacy removes the example set by those who let prejudice, commerce and regional pride overwhelm their basic humanity. Traits which - if you’ve been brave/foolish enough to read the comments section beneath any story about the Confederate flag - are still all too common, and still poison too many souls.
Education will always be better than elimination. Which is why I think the city of Memphis should leave Forrest and his wife exactly where they lay. They should make the graves a monument to the true history and actions of Lieutenant General Forrest. Including the massacre at Fort Pillow. Including his leadership role in the early days of the KKK. All of it.
The glare of the spotlight brought down the Confederate flag in South Carolina because hatred and racism and intolerance wither beneath the harsh light of scrutiny. Use that light to expose those parts of our history that caused - and continue to cause - great pain. Teach new generations that the values of the Antebellum South are to be scorned rather than embraced.
Because those who cannot let go of the past are condemned to perpetuate it.
