(Talking Points Memo) The Memphis, Tennessee City Council voted unanimously late Tuesday to remove the remains of a Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan founder from a city park.
Local TV station WREG reported that the city council passed a resolution that would remove Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest’s remains from beneath a statute honoring him in the Memphis’ Health Sciences Park, which had been named after Forrest until two years ago.
Public officials have moved to take down Confederate flags and other symbols of the Confederacy in the weeks since a white man gunned down nine black parishioners at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina. The shooter posed with the Confederate battle flag in photos taken before the massacre. The city council’s action in Memphis, a majority-black city, appears to be the first attempt to disinter the remains of a Confederate icon, however.
