Amid a growing national outcry against what many see as public symbols of white supremacy, the state of Tennessee on Monday honored one of its most controversial and infamous native sons: Nathan Bedford Forrest.

As per a 1971 state law, Tennessee’s Republican governor proclaimed 13 July Nathan Bedford Forrest Day. But a debate over how or whether to honor Forrest, a civil war cavalry general and slave trader and key figure in the founding of the Ku Klux Klan, has grown increasingly heated following the apparently racially motivated massacre of nine black Americans at Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, last month.

“Today means nothing to me, it means nothing to the people in this city,” said Myron Lowery, city council chairman in Memphis, where 63% of the city’s 653,000 residents are black.

The council voted unanimously to begin a legal process to exhume Forrest’s remains from a city park, which until two years ago was named after the general. The city is also attempting to remove a statue of Forrest.

“It is a symbol of racism, of bigotry, and hatred – there’s no need to honor a man that massacred people at Fort Pillow, there’s no need to honor a man who received his millions of dollars and fame from being a slave-trader,” said Lowery, speaking passionately about the need to move the general’s remains to Elmwood cemetery, where he was originally buried.

Forrest was 40 when he volunteered for the Confederate army. He had already become one of the wealthiest men in the south, rising from poverty to riches through the Tennessee slave trade. He is remembered as a brilliant tactician, violent, ruthless and cunning, who rose from private to general.

Two events have fuelled more than a century of controversy around his legacy: the battle of Fort Pillow, and his involvement with the Ku Klux Klan.

In April 1864 at Fort Pillow, about 60 miles north of Memphis, Forrest ordered his force of 2,500 men to overrun a position held by fewer than 600 soldiers, among them many newly freed slaves. Just 62 black soldiers survived the attack, which was called a “massacre” by Union troops. Forrest was later questioned by Congress for war crimes.

After the war, Forrest became the first leader of the KKK, a Grand Wizard. The secret society, founded by six Confederate soldiers, would grow to include violent independent chapters throughout the country. It exists today as the oldest group in America organized around racial hate.

The debate over how prominently Forrest should figure in Tennessee history is a recurring one, but it has grown especially loud following the Charleston massacre, said University of Tennessee geography professor Derek Alderman.

“We are in the midst of some very dramatic reinterpretation and challenging of how we remember the Confederacy and how we remember certain parts of the south’s past,” said Alderman, a cultural geographer who studies, among other things, how public memorials relate to African American history.

Alderman believes that symbols such as the Confederate flag and even figures such as Forrest have been “appropriated and brought into the present in such a way they have a very hostile meaning for certain people, particularly African Americans”.

“There hasn’t always been a critical discussion of how those symbols are used,” he said, “and how they are used in fact that could create a sense of alienation and pain in certain people.”

The executive director of the Tennessee Historical Society, Ann Toplovich, said she had “no idea” such memorial days existed “until publicity related to the terrible events in Charleston brought attention to such proclamations”.



The debate over how prominently Forrest should figure in state history extends to the capitol building, where his bust sits in the statehouse. The state’s Republican governor, Bill Haslam, said on Monday he anticipated a “re-look” at legislation that honored Forrest.



“If we’re only going to honor a certain number of Tennesseans, it’s like the bust in the capitol, I’m not sure Nathan Bedford Forrest should be one of those folks,” Haslam told WKRN-TV.

Mike Goza, left, helps Mike Junor drape a Confederate flag over the base of the statue and tomb of Nathan Bedford Forrest. Photograph: Mike Brown/AP

Like the Confederate battle flag, which has come to symbolize white supremacy to many, references to Forrest can seem omnipresent.

Tennessee has a Nathan Bedford Forrest state park. In Florida in 2013, Nathan Bedford Forrest high school was renamed after a 160,000-signature petition pressured local leaders. Forrest County in Mississippi was named for the general.

There is fervent opposition to removing symbols associated with the civil war. One of the larger recent rallies drew 2,000 vehicles in Ocala, Florida, to an event calling for the return of the Confederate battle flag to a historical display at the McPherson governmental complex. The county commission removed it after the shooting in Charleston.

In city of Tyler, Texas, where about 100,000 people live 100 miles east of Dallas, dozens rallied to support the Confederate flag when the city considered removing it. On 18 July, the KKK will rally in South Carolina, even though the state’s legislature has removed the flag from the grounds of its capitol in Columbia.

Back in Memphis, on Sunday hundreds rallied in support of the Forrest statue the city council has agreed to remove.