Story at a glance:
- The remains of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife are being removed from a park.
- A group that supports descendants of Confederate soldiers tried to sue the city of Memphis to keep his remains at the park.
- The group has changed course and paid a construction team to pull the general’s remains.
A slave trader and early Ku Klux Klan leader is having his remains removed from a park in Memphis, Tenn., that once honored him with a statue.
Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife, Mary Ann, were buried beneath a statue — which came down in December 2017 — of the general at the Health Sciences Park.
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Originally, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group that supports descendants of Confederate soldiers, sued to block the city and Memphis Greenspace’s efforts to remove the statue, saying that the removal would have violated the state cemetery law and Heritage Protection Law.
But the lawsuit has since been dropped, and now, paid for by the Sons of the Confederate Veterans, spokesperson Lee Millar said that disinterment could take up to three weeks, CNN affiliate WREG reported.
It is said that the general and wife will be buried on private land that will be publicly accessible in Columbia, Tenn.
“He deserves no presence in the city that is 75 percent people of color, 65 percent Black,” said Shelby County Commissioner Tami Sawyer, who led the movement to remove the statue.
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