Story at a glance
- The Civil War general led troops against the north and was a slave trader and early Ku Klux Klan leader.
- A statue of him was placed in 1904 and removed in 2017, prompting a lawsuit over the removal.
- The lawsuit was dropped after a nonprofit organization of descendants of Confederate veterans agreed to take possession of the remains.
The remains of a Confederate general and his wife are set to be removed from a Memphis, Tenn., park where a statue of the general once stood before it was removed in 2017, according to a local CBS affiliate.
The move to relocate the graves of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife, Mary Ann, comes after the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a nonprofit organization of descendants of Confederate veterans, dropped a pending lawsuit against Memphis Greenspace, the nonprofit organization that owns Health Sciences Park.
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In 2015, Memphis city leaders voted to move the statue of Forrest, who was a slave trader and early Ku Klux Klan leader, and sought a waiver from the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act, a law that governs the removal of memorials on public property. The statue of Forrest was placed in the park in 1904.
The Tennessee Historical Commission denied the request from the city, prompting the Memphis City Council to pass a law enabling the city to sell the park to Memphis Greenspace.
The nonprofit then took down Forrest’s monument, along with a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
The removal prompted the Sons of Confederate Veterans and descendants of Nathan Bedford Forrest to file a lawsuit against the City of Memphis and Memphis Greenspace, arguing the removal of the monument and remains violated the state cemetery law and Heritage Protection Law, WMC reported.
But this week, both sides came to an agreement outside the courtroom.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans dropped its pending lawsuit after coming to an agreement with park owners to remove the remains. The group will take possession of the two Civil War-related statues and the remains, according to CBS affiliate WREG.
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“We are pleased to say that the statues and the bodies of the general and his wife will be placed somewhere that will be honored and respected as all American veterans and citizens should be respected,” Donnie Kennedy, a spokesman for the group, told CNN without specifying where they would be relocated.
President of Memphis Greenspace and Shelby County Commissioner Van Turner told WREG he’s happy with the agreement.
“They don’t have to worry about further protests, further potential vandalism of the monuments,” Turner told WREG, adding that Memphis Greenspace will not pursue getting the statues banned from the state.
“As an American, as a defender of the Constitution, it is their right to do so, to freely express their views,” he said. “It’s my right as an American to not support that, to not visit it.”
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