Kind of an interesting story. They are exhuming the body of Nathan Bedford Forrest from a park to relocate it to a confederate museum. Maybe they should expand his monument to tell the whole story.
Man who called for the extermination of KKK members being kicked out of Memphis park
- Thread starter Crazyhole
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Kind of an interesting story. They are exhuming the body of Nathan Bedford Forrest from a park to relocate it to a confederate museum. Maybe they should expand his monument to tell the whole story.
People don’t believe in redemption anymore.
Nathan Bedford Forrest is a great example of someone who changed his views on race. But I don’t think most people want anything other than villains to fight against.
Nathan Bedford Forrest is a great example of someone who changed his views on race. But I don’t think most people want anything other than villains to fight against.
Lmao. Are we now revising history on the first grand wizard of the KKK for a little speech he made at the end of his life about race? Please look up NBF and Fort Pillow and get back to us. Dude spent the better portion of his life fukcing shit up for black people.
Use him as a history lesson bad and good. The guy is dead an could care less. Moving his body after this long is just plain stupid.
You know this board has gone completely off-the-rails when a poster here can opine with a straight face that Nathan Bedford Forrest — a Confederate general who callously had hundreds of surrendered Union soldiers slaughtered at Fort Pillow — represents a heartwarming, modern-day redemption story. SMH.
Just curious, @Knight In TN, if Adolph Hitler would have repented on his death bed and said he‘d ‘seen the light’ and was now cool with Jews, would this take of yours have applied to him too?
Hitler committed an industrialized genocide killing millions of Jews and started a world war.
Forrest had mainstream southern racist views at the time.
One of those guys is an extreme outlier among even the worst historical figures. Your hysterical comparisons of everything to Hitler is pretty telling of your mental and emotional intelligence.
In any event, Forrest didn’t just say on his death bed he was sorry. He was publicly supportive of civil rights for at least a few years before he died.
I don’t understand why you don’t want to accept that someone who held abhorrent views and did horrible things early in their life changed and did much better by the end of it.
I’m not saying anyone needs to celebrate him. There are people who did more good for much longer who deserve to be celebrated. But it says a lot about you if you want to strip someone of the best things they did in life just because you would prefer their worst is what’s remembered.
Ok, I will try not to turn this into a pissing contest as these threads in the WC are prone to become: while Der Shooky has a knack for bending his rhetoric into the hyperbolic, what he posed is not a bad comparison. Slaughtering 6 million Jews and slaughtering hundreds of SURRENDERED black soldiers are both crimes against humanity. Yes, one saw to exponentially more individuals who perished. We aren't going to sit here and say that fewer lives equals less distinction. Sorry, it can't and does not work that way.
It also doesn't work that if you spend the vast majority of your life doing what NBF did pre-war, during the war, and then post war--only to say, conveniently at the end of his life "J/K I repent, black people have feelings too!" Sorry, the body of work in his life far exceeds his facile attempts at recompense in the twilight of his existence.
And also, if you want to strip the "best things" (scare quotes for effect because please) someone did in life vs. the bad, sorry again, but you reap what you sow. I find it just a slightly bit amusing that you pass more judgement on someone else for doing that than on what the actual person in question did. And perhaps that says a lot about you...
/soapbox
In Der Shooky’s defense, the BS spewed here — like Knight In TN’s willingness to forgive of a mass-murdering Confederate general — makes it hard not to become hyperbolic.
B-B-But didn’t you read Knight In TN’s rebuttal?
The difference was that Forrest represented mainstream southern views at the time.
This is all true, but I would add that it'd be nice if we told the entire story, not just the best or worst parts of people in history. Schindler is a good but far too rare example of that happening.
Your attitude won’t make the world better. Your attitude makes it pointless for anyone to realize they were wrong and do better. They’re damned for what they’ve already done, and their legacy is one that’s already written based on whoever they were when they were the worst version of themselves.
So if you’re already a piece of shit, what’s the point of turning your life around?
There’s no forgiveness for you, slave trading, racist, confederate general. You are the worst of what you did with your life. Your attempts to reform your backwards thoughts and actions were in vain. It does not matter that you offered the governor your help to track down whites who murdered blacks in cold blood. It doesn’t matter that you advocated for economic and political opportunities for blacks in your final years. It doesn’t matter how unpopular that advocacy was at the time in the south. No... you are always only a slave-trading racist confederate general.
Yeah, who am I to believe that someone should be held accountable for the mass slaughter of surrendered black troops. WTF am I thinking. I'm sorry but as I said, you reap what you sow. Sure, tell the complete story but let's not pretend that this somehow miraculously absolves the many, many sins of someone's life. To do so cheapens the lives of the hundreds of blacks who were, ahem, murdered in cold blood.
All the Nazis at Nuremberg were pretty damn sorry for what they did and couldn't believe that they were the type of person who committed their various crimes against humanity. We hanged many of their bastard asses regardless.
Anyhow, we're just going to go in circles here and this isn't going to accomplish much. I am clearly not going to make much headway with you here.
I have no problem doing this. Furthermore, if you've ever read Shelby Foote, the Civil War historian and novelist, you'd be fascinated with the true military genius of NBF. Foote once wrote that the Civil War produced two true geniuses of their time: Lincoln and Forrest. His tactical skills on the battlefield, with absolutely no military training whatsoever, was the stuff of brilliance. And I am also quite aware of his attempts at reclamation toward the end of his life.
You forgot mass-murderer.
Just a reminder, this thread is about removing the corpse of a Confederate General from a park that was once named IN HIS HONOR for crying out loud. OH, HORROR OF HORRORS, city leaders are relocating the body without the slightest concern about telling the whole story about Forrest -- which apparently includes saying (when he was a dying old man) that he was really sorry about ordering the cold-blooded murder all those people.
Yea, black folks should just go ahead and get over the hundreds of years of slavery, hatred, subjugation, exploitation, and murder.
Well, we could all start by NOT celebrating the people directly responsible for some of that hatred and murder like Nathan Bedford Forrest.
You could start by not being butthurt when monuments honoring racist traitors are removed, and making excuse after excuse for why they should stay, and believing it is an affront against all white people and our heritage to do so.
Maybe a good starting point is to recognize a mass-murdering, slave-trading traitor for what he was instead of making excuses for the guy.
It makes people reading this thread wonder why in the world you're doing it.
The fact that some people feel removing Confederate monuments is an 'affront' to our Southern heritage speaks volumes.
That is the modern right-wing for you. That is all they have left. Everything is offensive to their male, christian, white, straight, middle-class, "conservative" (yes, it belongs in quotes), mom-and-pop, hillbilly, white-bred, basic-ass collectivist, consumer, lifestyle.
Then they go and cry that everyone else is trying to shut them down with "PC culture." They've been getting shut down for the last 30 years post-Reagan, and it hurts their feelings.
It doesn't seem like they see it as an affront to anything. They're moving the monument and the remains to the confederate museum where they can praise and worship him and tell the story they want people to hear.
They've been the ones telling the stories for the entire history of the USA. Our history is white-washed as f*ck, and conservatives still get an ass-ache every time somebody tries to make a change back to reality.
Well, nobody has whitewashed the story of NBF. I never knew he denounced the KKK until a couple of years ago. For all I knew, he died being the racist Klan leader we were all taught that he was.
Where did I say any of that?
Where did I make excuses for him?
He’s an interesting character in American history. And while you might like to think that there are only pure heroes and evil villains, that’s not the way life works, thankfully.
He’s important to discuss as a whole because the arc of his life is good for bad people to see. It’s important for racists to see the end of his life, where he didn’t hold those values anymore. His story of transformation is one you should hope to see in more people, not one to hide behind the evil he did.
What have YOU done, Chemmie?
I don’t have any problem with removing monuments. Please find where I said I did.
They are relocating him to the Confederate Museum, so I don't have a problem with this.
I think it's just fine if people are moved out of 'general' locations to locations specific to 'historical perspective.' His story of any 'redemption' can be told there.
It's not like they are physically pissing on his grave, or stealing or defiling it or, worse yet, ... taking a private statue on private property, and destroying it (all while CNN calls it 'public' / 'taxpayer funded,' of course).
Although if they try to do this with 80% of the past Presidents of the United States, then I'll start having a problem.
What a piece of work. Instead of pointing fingers at your accusers and saying 'what have YOU done?,' why not simply respond with "oops, my bad," and apologize for making a stupid comment?
You play the innocent, "who me?" act and act like this was all about removing monuments and you certainly didn't say anything about that, right?
What happened to the poster who said, and I quote: "People don’t believe in redemption anymore. Nathan Bedford Forrest is a great example of someone who changed his views on race. But I don’t think most people want anything other than villains to fight against"??!?
You don't need to answer his dumbass questions. It is obvious that he is playing the poor, hurt, oppressed white man game.
Never mentioned myself. I’m discussing a disturbing social trend away from forgiving anyone. Everyone is a target to attack, and there’s great fun for the mob to find and ruin whomever they can dig up dirt on.
What a shock that Chemmie interprets that as a racial thing.
Um, we WEREN'T discussing monuments -- which is what I pointed out if you'd bothered to read my post. We're discussing "a disturbing social trend away from forgiving anyone." Apparently, that includes mass-murdering Civil War traitors.
Yeah, what a shock! How in the world could Chemmie have interpreted your comments about a Confederate general who mass-murdered hundreds of Black Union soldiers -- who had surrendered to him -- as "a racial thing???"
A real head-scratcher, right? 😆
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