Members of Congress want Fort Pillow State Historic Park to become a National Park Service site.
A bill filed this week by U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) would study the proposal. Cohen co-sponsored similar legislation, called the Fort Pillow National Battlefield Park Study Act, in 2021. It would direct the U.S. Department of the Interior to determine if the park’s Civil War history qualifies it as a national park.
“Fort Pillow has long been ignominious as the site of a Confederate slaughter of surrendered Union forces, many of them African Americans in uniform, and it deserves the recognition that National Park Service status bestows,” Cohen said in a statement. “It is essential that we learn from our history, remember its tragedies, and honor those who fell. This bill authorizes a study to advance knowledge of this major but oft-forgotten event in our history.”
The park and battlefield site is 40 miles north of Memphis in Henning, Tennessee. In 1864, the fort was surrounded and recaptured by Confederate soldiers under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest.
After its original capture form the Confederates, the fort had been occupied by Union troops for nearly two years, serving as a supply depot and recruitment center. It was garrisoned by 19 officers and 538 troops, or whom were 262 United States Colored Troops (USTC), according to the 1864 report called “Fort Pillow Massacre” by the United States Congress Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War.
“Of the men, from 300 to 400 are known to have been killed at Fort Pillow, of whom at least 300 were murdered in cold blood after the fort was in possession of the rebels and our men had thrown down their arms and ceased to offer resistance,” reads the report.
Congressional findings in the 2021 bill say, “at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, Confederate forces never defeated the Union Navy. Instead, they perpetrated a heinous massacre after violating a flag of truce by advantageously repositioning rebel troops and by looting government buildings and private storefronts surrounding the fort.”
Fort Pillow became a state park in 1971. The 1,642-acre park was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 and designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1974. The park has a Civil War museum, hiking trails, a camp ground, and a picnic area.
The 2021 bill says the state of Tennessee “allows the wrongful modification of the historical record by claiming it was a battle without a massacre of hundreds of surrendering Union troops and innocent civilians.”
”This site deserves to become a National Battlefield Park due to its profound effect on USTC and all Union forces in their fight to preserve the United States of America,” reads the 2021 bill.