Well, folks, it has now been a week since the Memphis City Council voted to rename three area parks, and it is my distinct pleasure to tell you that aside from all the pearl clutching the armchair historians are doing over this, nothing has changed, except perhaps public opinion of Tennessee and its residents.
Our esteemed Mayor A.C. Wharton has finally seen fit to grace us all with his personal philosophy “that we always need more history," and called for a city ordinance to help guide the process of selecting new names for these parks. Where exactly can we find more history, Mr. Mayor? We seem to have it in droves, and the fact that tens of thousands of Memphis residents can't handle said history is part of the problem.
For some reason there are still people in this town that labor under the delusion that changing the name of a landmark somehow will also erase any and all references to the individual it was named for. Oh, if only it were so simple, as say, whitewashing the truth and creating the revisionist history that we teach our students about the Civil War, and why it was fought.
That anyone in this country, but especially in the South, can spout the ever popular "states' rights" argument, or that the Confederacy somehow seized a victory for us as a country, even in their defeat, is pathetic and shameful. Some of you are also still laboring under the delusion that all history deserves to be celebrated, and that the late General Forrest was an individual worthy of being posthumously honored; that his contributions to the city of Memphis and to our country were so tremendous and amazing that his remains needed to be disinterred from Elmwood Cemetery nearly half a century after his burial, and moved to what is now the former Forrest Park, with a large statue of the general on horseback erected atop his new gravesite. I can’t even type that with a straight face. It is 2013 and I have news for some of our fellow citizens: The South lost the war. It is long past time for some of us to acquaint ourselves with that fact, and then get the fuck over it. The South will not rise again, and nor should it, for declaring war against the United States is an act of treason. If the events of that time were to be repeated today, at the conclusion of the war, General Forrest would have been charged as the traitor that he was, and sentenced to death.
Of course nowadays, he’d probably get struck down by a drone, dispatched without public knowledge or approval, killing him and anyone else in the general vicinity, but that is another matter entirely. [Ed: Cough cough!]
Here's a tip: if you were a prominent leader of an organization that worked to terrorize and assert supremacy over another race, including ordering them killed in cold blood as they attempted to surrender, you don't deserve to have a public park named after you.
The fact that some are still arguing about this is why we apparently can’t have nice things, Memphis. Go anywhere in this country outside of the South, and ask the locals what they think about the fact that the remains of the first leader of the first domestic terrorist group in this country, the Ku Klux Klan, are laid to rest less than two miles from the balcony upon which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Let them know about the manufactured controversy about giving the park a name that does not honor a murderous traitor that fought and killed and sent many of his own troops to death for the right to own human beings as personal property. I guarantee that the response will overwhelmingly be along the lines of, “what the fuck took you guys so long?” That this is allowed to persist is shameful, and an embarrassment to our city. It is safe to say that a lot of people in the Greater Memphis area need to get that through their incredibly thick, yet largely empty heads. I’m looking at you especially, Mayor Wharton. How about a city ordinance that states we will stop glorifying the most abhorrent events of our past, and work towards creating a new legacy, one that current and future generations of Memphians can be proud of?
Aimee Stiegemeyer really likes to express her thoughts via the written word when she is not chasing her munchkins around. Really, really, she appreciates the opportunity to talk to adults.
I am disappointed that you left out the most important consideration for the name change: the recently introduced, but not yet passed, "Tennessee Heritage Protection Act of 2013" introduced as HB 0553 by state representative Steve McDaniel and SB 0836 by state senator Bill Ketron (http://openstates.org/tn/bills/108/HB553/). Basically, according to the bills, renaming these parks in the future would not be allowed because they are named after military-related history or historical figures.
ReplyDeleteThe American Civil War was clearly about “states' rights” though it's more complex than that. The extent of the battle between the powers of the Federal Government and its member states at that time has only been greater around the nation's founding. The 10th Amendment left out the word “expressly” unlike the analogous parts of the Articles of Confederation and thus weakened it. Nevertheless, the states saw the Federal Government acting in violation of the 10th Amendment. The Federal Government saw Article VI of the Constitution as giving it "supreme Law of the Land" in conflicting matters between state and federal jurisdiction. Were issues of slavery, more about specific acts concerning slavery than slavery itself, at the forefront of these conflicts? Absolutely! Unfortunately, attributing the casus belli of the Civil War to either exclusively slavery or states' rights is akin to the attribution of WWI to an assassination—deceivingly and ignorantly incorrect in simplification. It is worth noting that after the war ended the 10th Amendment was completely ignored for quite some time.
Back to my original point, if someone were to compare the role of Tennessee's state government and the role of city government in things like naming and renaming city parks, the comparison between the conflict of state and federal power is mind-blowingly obvious. The beautiful irony is that those who oppose the renaming of the parks because it discounts the importance of the War between the States are actually discounting the integrity for what they say caused it. I cannot think of a logical argument that accounts for states having rights that shouldn't be overstepped by the Federal Government that shouldn't apply to cities and counties having rights that shouldn't be overstepped by their state government.
That's the only argument you need to justify the renaming of the parks. The Memphis City Council prevented the state of Tennessee from interfering from matters that involve Memphis and its citizens. We, as Memphians, still retain the power to rename these parks—even back to their prior names—if we so choose to. Renaming these parks has been considered for a long time. I doubt these names would have changed if those in Nashville had not decided to get involved.
I find your dismissal of General Forrest's relevance to history to be unfair. I am not defending the man so much as defending an unfair characterization of him. To compare, I truly despise Pope Benedict XVI and can criticize him for numerously many actions, but it would be unfair to criticize him for being a member of the Hitler Youth as it wasn't a voluntary decision. To describe Forrest as a “traitor” would be akin to describing Washington as a “traitor” to the British Crown. Should we also rename parks and streets named after Andrew Jackson because he orchestrated the Trail of Tears? I would question the consistency of your reasoning and arguments if you did not think so.
In closing, countering the oversimplified arguments presented by people with rebel flags shouldn't be countered with oversimplified arguments.