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.
