Author: naomi van tol

Shelby County commissioner Walter Bailey says we should talk about renaming parks that honor Confederates. I have to admit that few things would entertain me more than seeing the Confederacy finally get whipped at its last stand in Memphis, Tennessee.

But them pesky neo-Rebels are always itching for a good media frenzy, and I’m just wondering if we can’t find a better way to help our city outgrow its Old South fixation. Sure, we could topple that big bronze statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest and dance on his grave, literally, but erasing a symbol of racial division will not erase the reality of that. Renaming our parks might treat a few symptoms, but can it cure the disease?

As William Faulkner said of the South: “The past isn’t dead. It’s not even past.” No matter how deeply we bury our dead, they keep lunging out of the graveyard to spoil the tea party. I think our best hope is to expose our troubled past to more fresh air and sunshine, rather than less.

Fact: Nathan Bedford Forrest was a brilliant soldier and strategist who inspired the respect of allies and enemies alike. As it became clear that the Confederacy was losing the war, Forrest decided that the institution of slavery was also doomed. He then freed the 45 slaves who had served his troops as teamsters.

Fact: Forrest was a slave trader and a founder of the Ku Klux Klan. In the early days of the Civil War, he said, “If we ain’t fightin’ to keep slavery, what the hell are we fightin’ for?” Forrest fought to preserve a social structure that classed black Americans as chattel, and his words remain a potent challenge to neo-Confederate attempts to rewrite history.

Faulkner also said, “Facts and truth really don’t have much to do with each other.” But the truth is, Forrest was neither a devil nor a saint. He was a complicated man whose story can teach us valuable lessons if we choose to listen. Does Forrest deserve to be publicly honored by a community that struggles daily with the painful legacy of slavery and the Civil War? Only if we are ready to try telling the whole story.

The heart of a community is revealed in the people it chooses as heroes. If the tainted glory of Nathan Bedford Forrest is the best we can offer the next generation of Memphians, we are as doomed as the Confederacy. It is plain that our collective heart is still bitterly divided.

But rather than toppling statues, how about if we build more of them? We need a big bronze statue of Ida B. Wells-Barnett in Court Square. We need a statue of Martin Luther King Jr. on Main Street. We need a statue of Rosa Parks kicking up her heels on Beale. We need to celebrate life as we honor death, to work for peace even as we remember war. We need to try to be better than ourselves.

So here’s what I would do about the late great Nathan Bedford: I would change the name of Forrest Park to Unity Park. At the north end of the park (of course), I would build a big bronze statue of that brilliant soldier and strategist Ulysses S. Grant. In the heart of the park, beneath all those beautiful oak trees, I would build a sobering memorial to our brothers and sisters who fought and suffered and died on both sides of the Civil War.

Then I would build a playground for the kids.

Naomi Van Tol is an environmental activist and writer.

Dear Christian Brothers University,

You don’t know me, but I am a 1997 graduate of your school, where I got a solid education and learned some stuff, too. But I must admit I’m still confused about why you forbade Reverend James Lawson to speak at CBU back in July. It seemed like you were afraid of what he might say, but I just read where Calvary Episcopal Church let Rev. Lawson speak at their place instead and he was real nice about what you did to him, so I can’t figure out what you were afraid of.

I remember hearing in philosophy class that you can learn a lot by listening to other people, even if you don’t always agree with what they say. (I also remember trying to reach a consensus on whether morality is relative or absolute, but we ended up ordering pizza instead.) Like all of you, I prefer to think that I’m a pretty good person. I don’t shoplift, litter, or talk on the phone while driving. I donate to charity, I floss almost daily, and I love kids. Oh, and I’m also pro-choice like Rev. Lawson.

See, I really wish that we lived in a perfect world where all babies were born into loving homes. But until we teach sex education to our children, and until more pro-life adults adopt unwanted kids, and until we realize that expecting chastity from teenagers is plain silly, and until everyone has free access to birth control, and until men stop raping women — well, it seems like we could try harder to fix the problem from the other end, you know?

I’m not afraid of your opinions, so long as you don’t use bullets and bombs to make your point, and I have nothing but respect for those who truly act on the belief that all life is sacred. You’ve got to admire a person who speaks out equally against abortion, fur coats, capital punishment, insecticides, warfare, hamburgers, terrorism, leather shoes, euthanasia, and antibiotics. I don’t actually know any people who do all of that, but I like to think they’d exist in a perfect world.

But let’s talk about CBU now. Y’all must be extra-qualified to judge Rev. Lawson. I mean, didn’t you risk your life on civil rights marches? Weren’t you jailed for protesting injustice and war? Wasn’t the hatred and saliva just hell to wash out of your hair after those sit-ins? And haven’t you been banned from speaking on college campuses because people were so afraid of what you might say? I bet you have some great answers to my questions, so I will wait until I hear back before I respond to your latest alumni fund-raising appeal.

I read one of Rev. Lawson’s speeches once where he explains his response to the people who enforced racial segregation: “My sense of their being human beings nevertheless in spite of their behavior towards me was forged [by] a need, at least in me at the time, to be a human being and to resist evil, not by imitating evil, but by seeking to overcome it with good.”

That seems like such sensible advice (watch out, Ann Landers!) that I’m going to stick it on my fridge next to a quote from another brave man who was silenced because people were afraid of him: “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” I know the grammar and spelling are kind of funny — being as how the guy didn’t have the benefit of an English degree from CBU like me — but it’s an interesting idea anyway. Don’t you think?

Naomi Van Tol is a Memphian who works in the field of environmental activism.