Tag: Lee Millar

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

‘Just a Park’

Millar, Turner, and Taylor at Health Sciences Park (Photo: Jackson Baker)

In the wake of a previous circumstance of tenseness and hostility at Health Sciences Park involving the disinterment of Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife Mary Ann Montgomery Forrest, a press conference at the park on Friday, June 11th, was at least partly designed to clear the air, and to a large extent it may have.

The three principal speakers at last Friday’s press conference were County Commissioner and NAACP leader Van Turner of Greenspace, the nonprofit which now controls the large tract formerly known as Forrest Park; Lee Millar, president of the Memphis branch of the Sons of Confederate Veterans; and Brent Taylor, a longtime public official and the local funeral director who satisfied the state requirement for a technical advisor regarding the disinterment of the Forrests, destined now for a new gravesite at a Middle Tennessee site honoring Confederate history.

As Turner expressed it, “Hopefully, all sides were satisfied” — meaning the Black Memphians for whom the removal of the graves and monument meant a “full circle” expungement of former injustice and disregard as well as those whites who equated Confederate General Forrest with glory and their heritage. “I think the Forrest family wanted their ancestor to lie in peace, and there was never going to be any peace here,” Turner said.

Millar attested to the friendly cooperation and a general meeting-of-the-minds between himself and Turner, and Taylor, who saw himself as situated “in the middle” between communities, agreed that “all sides are happy with where we are. Both communities believe that we did this right.”

Asked what the future disposition of the park might be, Turner said he’d received “many recommendations,” but “Right now, we just want this to be a park, not to have any more symbolism here for a little while. We’d like people to just enjoy the park”

• Ellen Hobbs Lyle, the Nashville chancellor who ruled in favor of expanding mail-in voting last year at the height of the pandemic and subsequently incurred the wrath of the state Republican establishment, said last week that she wouldn’t seek another eight-year term in 2022. The suit that she ruled on was pressed by the ACLU and by a group of Memphis petitioners, and Lyle’s ruling was stoutly resisted by the state’s election authorities, who managed to get its scope reduced somewhat in an appeal to the Tennessee Supreme Court. Subsequently, measures to punish Lyle were pushed by GOP legislators in the general assembly but were rejected.

• Governor Bill Lee announced last week that his administration would go ahead with a 37-mile wastewater pipeline connecting the still dormant Haywood County industrial megasite to the Mississippi River. Construction of the $52 million project could begin in the first quarter of 2022.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Guns to Blast and the Stars and Bars to Fly Again in Bartlett

the 51st Tennessee Infantry, slated to get another crack at them Damyankees (even if a make-believe one)!

Several things you thought might be over aren’t over. The Civil War, for one. At least via reenactment, the guns will flare again in Bartlett on Saturday and Sunday, November 5-6.

And one more notable Déjà vu: the Stars and Bars of the Confederate Battle Flag, tucked away in embarrassment here and there after the horrific 2015 murder of 9 African-American churchgoers in Charleston, S.C. but due to be flying once more on that weekend (in tandem with the Stars and Stripes, to be sure).

Perhaps we should let the press release on the event — from the “Battle of Bartlett Association,” through the medium of Lee Miller, a prominent spokesperson for remembrance of Confederate history — speak for itself:

The Rebs and Yanks will be skirmishing through Bartlett, TN (once called Union Station) in two reenactments of the 1864 battles in Bartlett. This is the 152nd anniversary of the Civil War battles and held in conjunction with the 150th anniversary of the chartering of the town. The two different battles are at 1:00 pm both days on Sat Nov 5 and Sunday Nov 6, and will feature mounted cavalry, cannons, infantry and pyrotechnics.

The reenactments will be held at W. J. Freeman Park, 2629 Bartlett Blvd, in Bartlett, TN 38134, NE suburb of Memphis. There will also be a free (with admission) Grand Civil War Ball with the 52nd Regimental String Band on Saturday night plus a night cannon fire, a period 1860’s church service on Sunday morning, and sutlers, guest speakers, period clothiers and crafts, and food vendors all weekend.
Admission is $5.00 per person each day. Commemorative souvenir booklets will also be on sale.

On Friday Nov 4, the Battle of Bartlett Association will host a Civil War School Day at Freeman Park from 8am to 2pm, which will feature 12 ‘stations’ for the 5th, 8th and 11th grade students to tour. The stations will present various aspects of life in the 1860’s, including a doctor, cannon, women, Black Southerners, farm life, soldiers’ camp, music, and more.

Sponsored by the Battle of Bartlett Assn with support by the city of Bartlett and the Bartlett School District. Contact (901) 550-5772, www.battleofbartlett.org, email battleofbartlett@yahoo.com .

Categories
News The Fly-By

Update on Removal of Forrest Statue

CREDIT: Toby Sells

The Memphis City Council voted this week to remove the statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest from Health Sciences Park, even though the next steps to make that happen remain murky.

The proposal to remove the statue surfaced in June, part of a national movement to remove Confederate symbols after a white supremacist shot nine African Americans at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. 

Toby Sells

Confederate supporters at a rally on Saturday

The move also ratifies a 2013 resolution to rename Forrest Park to Health Sciences Park, Confederate Park to Memphis Park, and Jefferson Davis Park to Mississippi River Park. A separate but related proposal to move Forrest’s remains and those of his wife from the park and back to Elmwood Cemetery was approved by the council in early July.

Council chairman Myron Lowery sponsored the ordinance for the statue’s removal.

“It’s important because Memphis is not the same city it was in 1905, when the statue was put in place,” Lowery said. “It is wrong to honor a slave trader on public property in 2015.”

But Lee Millar, a leader of the local Sons of Confederate Veterans group, said Saturday he didn’t see it that way. He and about 100 others gathered around Forrest’s statue, hoisting, waving, and wearing Confederate flags, their conversations about Southern heritage and the council vote only interrupted by a bullhorn that sporadically belted out “Dixie.”

“We’ll be there Tuesday to let the council know they’re doing the wrong thing,” Millar said. “They don’t need to erase Memphis history.”

Millar said removing the statue is a “waste of time,” that it wouldn’t “solve a single problem with gangs and crime and all of that,” and that it would only “add to the division in Memphis.” Forrest was a “prominent Memphian,” Millar said, as a city council member and an executive in an insurance company and a railroad who “hired blacks and whites alike” to help “rebuild Memphis after the [Civil War].”

Allan Wade, the city council’s attorney, said last week that he was still working on a plan for the statue’s removal and would reveal the details to the council. An official in Memphis Mayor A C Wharton’s office said the city has had “several offers” for the statue, including a very public one from the mayor of Savannah, Tennessee, who told news outlets last month his city would pay for the statue and its relocation.

“But there is still a lengthy process that has to take place before the statue and graves can be removed from the public space,” said Dewanna Smith, a Wharton spokesperson. “At this point, it would be premature to respond to any offers.”

Relocating the graves will also be a lengthy process. The matter will be decided in Shelby County Chancery Court in a case between the city and Forrest’s descendants. Millar said he has located eight Forrest descendants in the area and that “every one of them is steadfastly against moving the statue or the grave.”

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter From The Editor: The Klan and the Sign

I enjoy Commercial Appeal writer Wendi C. Thomas’ columns. I mostly agree with her, and even when I don’t, I appreciate her sass, intelligence, and wit. That said, her January 13th column, titled “Marker for Klan founder Forrest moved by KKK’s worst nightmare: A powerful black man,” was, as Thomas might say, something of a hot mess.

The column was about the removal of a sign put up by the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Forrest Park, which was detailed in last week’s Flyer cover story by Jackson Baker. The basic facts are these: Lee Millar, writing as chairman of the Shelby County Historical Commission, offered to put up a new sign for the park. Cindy Buchanan, then the city’s park director, responded in a letter to Millar: “The proposal to create a low, monument-style sign of Tennessee granite with the park name carved in the front was reviewed by park design staff and found to be appropriate in concept … similar to the monument-style signage placed by the city at Overton Park.”

George Little, the city CAO, and Mike Flowers, the administrator of park planning and development, were copied on Buchanan’s letter.

Millar, who is also an officer of the local chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, got the SCV to come up with the funds for the sign, and it was put up last spring. In October, county commissioner Walter Bailey sent Little a three-part file on the sign and asked that it be taken down.

In December, Baker asked Buchanan about the sign. She said she recalled being asked about the sign but that she “honestly [didn’t] remember what I said to them about that.” Uh huh. Little told Baker he could find no records of anyone having signed off on the new sign. Millar had no such problem finding the letter from Buchanan that was copied to Little, and he sent a copy to Baker.

In the week between Christmas and New Year’s, Little had the sign removed. There is no doubt in my mind that Millar pulled a fast one in using his chairmanship of the Shelby County Historical Society as cover to get a sign erected by the SCV. But he did get city approval.

Thomas portrayed the whole affair as racial, with Little playing the role of a “strong black man” frustrating the Ku Klux Klan. But it seems to me that the removal of the sign was more likely a case of butt-covering by city officials. Demagoguing the affair as “black versus white” does no one any good.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com