Remembering Nathan Bedford Forrest: White Supremacy and the Memphis Monument

I'm finally getting around to sharing my recently completed master's final project. I figure that if I put months of work into it, then someone needs to read it.

The paper is Remembering Nathan Bedford Forrest: White Supremacy and the Memphis Monument.

Many people are not familiar with Nathan Bedford Forrest, so a quick introduction is in order. Forrest was from my home state of Tennessee, which is one reason I became interested in this topic. Before the Civil War, Forrest was the leading slave trader in Memphis. When the war started, he enlisted as a private but was soon authorized to start his own cavalry command and rose to the rank of brigadier general.

Many southerners remember Forrest as a brilliant military tactician who was able to defeat larger, stronger Union forces in numerous battles. But Forrest was also in command of Confederate forces at the battle of Fort Pillow where Union soldiers, mostly African American troops, were massacred.

Following the Civil War, Forrest became the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and fought to end Reconstruction, not only in Tennessee, but throughout the South.

In 1905, a monument to Forrest was dedicated in Memphis, TN. This monument still stands today and, like the Confederate flag, is a source of conflict in a city that is majority African American.

The paper is presented in three major sections. In the first, Memphis and the Monument, I argue that the monument, even when dedicated in 1905, was a symbol of white supremacy. Its primary purpose at the time - and even now - was to remind the citizens of Memphis that whites were a superior race.

In second chapter, The Contentious Nathan Bedford Forrest, I address the continued support of Forrest by examination of historical fact. Forrest's modern supporters rely on a handful of claims to defend his image, but these are based on misrepresentations and distortions of the facts. Some of these claims are that a massacre didn't really take place at Fort Pillow, that Forrest - while a slave trader - was a "kind and gentle" master, or that Forrest's only involvement with the Klan was to disband it after it became violent. Some even credit Forrest for becoming a civil rights leader near the end of his life. The facts used to support this, when taken out of the context of nineteenth century politics, can easily be distorted by Forrest's supporters. But the reality is that Forrest continued to believe in, and promote, a vision of white supremacy until his death in 1877.

The final chapter, The Never-Ending Controversy, takes a look at recent events in Memphis that reveal the true nature of Forrest's modern supporters in the Neo-Confederate movement. Those who honor Forrest today are just as guilty of promoting the white supremacist agenda as the men who originally built the monument over 100 years ago.