Confederate statues supporters troll Memphis, Mayor Strickland

Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland posted "Merry Christmas!" on his Facebook page Monday and wished people "a blessed holiday season filled with goodwill and peace."

In the wake of the sudden removal Wednesday evening of two Confederate monuments from Downtown parks, the social media response to his glad tidings was less than peaceful, lacked goodwill and hardly in keeping with the spirit of the season.

One probably anonymous commenter on Facebook said he hoped the mayor would watch his family die before dying himself and following them "to hell."

In another negative comment, one of several, commenters "Mike Junior" — who helped clean graffiti off the Forrest statue in 2015 — called the city a "cesspool full of crime and violence" and said he hoped the mayor, a "worthless Pig," would have "coal in his stocking."

Powerless to prevent removal of the statues of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest from Health Sciences Park and President Jefferson Davis from Fourth Bluff Park, some supporters of the statues are instead trolling the city and mayor online. The attacks via social media, emails and phone calls range from name-calling — Strickland is a fascist to some people, a communist to others — to criminal threats against him and his family.

"We've received a fair number of vulgar posts — almost exclusively from out-of-towners," said city spokesman Kyle Veazey, who manages the city's social media accounts.

He added: "They have the ability to post — but Memphians do as well."

Memphians overwhelmingly responded to the removal of the statues with an outpouring of love for their city, he said.

Donnita Cunningham of Memphis wrote in response to the mayor's holiday wishes that most of the people she knows in the city agree with his actions.

"The outsiders and malcontents are obnoxiously loud, but the rest of us are sitting here in solidarity. Thank you," she wrote.

When trolls began posting negative, one-star reviews of the city on Facebook, Memphis' average rating dropped to 2.1 stars on a five-star scale. But following a plea from Veazey, The Commercial Appeal columnist Geoff Calkins among others answered the call and posted more than 630 new five-star reviews to raise the average rating to 3.6 stars — 772 five-stars vs. 414 one-stars, with few in between — as of Tuesday.

"I have lived in Memphis for 27 years," wrote Scott Springer, a vocal supporter in the Save the Greensward movement and sometimes-critic of the city's handling of the Greensward. "It has become a better place to live every year."

In her review, twice-deployed, now-retired U.S. Army soldier Lori Luster said she was proud of her city for its takedown of the statues of "traitors to the country."

"Museums and history books can preserve this horrific and shameful history. Not a park," she wrote.

Reach Ryan Poe at poe@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter at @ryanpoe.