Klantroversy in Selma, Alabama

Monument to Nathan Bedford Forrest,
first Imperial Wizard of the KKK, in Selma, AL,
before the bust on top was stolen. Grassroots Democracy, a community organization in Selma, Alabama, has posted a petition at Change.org which has garnered close to 320,000 signatures to stop the repair and expansion of a monument dedicated to Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general, slave dealer, and first Imperial Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan.

The controversy, or Klantroversy, as I dub it, is attracting notice outside of Selma.


Protestors in Selma, Alabama, will try to stop Klan founder's monument.

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (Reuters) - Racist, murderer, or savior of the town? Nathan Bedford Forrest still stirs controversy in Selma, Alabama, where emotions are running high over plans to replace a monument honoring the Civil War officer and Ku Klux Klan founder.

A bust of Forrest was stolen from a cemetery in the city in March and when the Friends of Forrest raised money to replace it, opponents gathered 84,000 signatures to stop them. In August, protestors laid in front of trucks to prevent the statue from being installed, said civil rights lawyer Rose Sanders, who founded The Museum of Slavery and the Civil War in Selma.

Protestors now plan to march on the cemetery on Friday, then drive to a church in Birmingham, some 85 miles away, where four children were killed in 1963 by a bomb set by Klan members, said organizer Sanders. The protestors are part of a local group called Grassroots Democracy.

"Would people tolerate a statue of bin Laden or a Nazi? I know of no one in U.S. history less deserving of a monument," said Sanders.

These are shrines. Not simply "history."

I'm not looking at this simply as a great-granddaughter of enslaved Americans, even though I had black ancestors who fought in the Civil War. I have a white great-grandfather who did as well. He fought for the Union, serving in the 6th Light Artillery Regiment of Wisconsin. I also have kinship ties to those who are descended from soldiers who fought for the South. However, they have researched their family simply to understand history a bit better, and they aren't wearing that history as a badge of pride and courage, nor do they condone racism.

I often hear the glorification of Confederate figures explained away as simply "Southern Pride."  

I call that b.s.

It is a justification for the continuation of a cult of racial superiority.

Confederate Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest Monuments to Forrest are scattered throughout the South. Quite a few are in his home state of Tennessee, including a state park named in his honor in Benton County.

Nathan Bedford Forrest (July 13, 1821 ' October 29, 1877) was a lieutenant general in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. He is remembered both as a self-educated, innovative cavalry leader during the war and as a leading southern advocate in the postwar years. He served as the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, a secret vigilante organization which launched a reign of terrorism against African-Americans, Northerners that had moved to the postwar South, Southerners who supported the Union, and Republicans during the Reconstruction era in the Southern United States.

A cavalry and military commander in the war, Forrest is one of the war's most unusual figures. Less educated than many of his fellow officers, Forrest had amassed a fortune prior to the war as a planter, real estate investor, and slave trader. He was one of the few officers in either army to enlist as a private and be promoted to general officer and division commander by the end of the war. Although Forrest lacked formal military education, he had a gift for strategy and tactics. He created and established new doctrines for mobile forces, earning the nickname The Wizard of the Saddle.

He was accused of war crimes at the Battle of Fort Pillow for allowing forces under his command to conduct a massacre upon hundreds of black Union Army and white Southern Unionist prisoners. In their postwar writings, Confederate President Jefferson Davis and General Robert E. Lee both expressed their belief that the Confederate high command had failed to fully utilize Forrest's talents.

(Continue reading below the fold.)