The 9:01: Memphians gather to launch movement against Confederate monuments

The first speaker was Bill Black, a Memphis native and history Ph.D candidate at Rice University, who said his great, great grandfather was a Confederate soldier who fought at Shiloh.

“I don’t think we should erase our past. But these monuments, themselves, are an erasure of our past. These monuments do not teach. They humiliate. They denigrate. They lie.”

Roughly 50 more Memphians followed last night at Bruce Elementary School, in the first public meeting of Memphians for Removal of Confederate Monuments, speaking in favor of removing Memphis monuments to former Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest. They spoke beneath a pre-existing, hand-colored banner proclaiming “We Are Conquerors,” an apparently unconnected piece of school paraphernalia. Perhaps it will prove prophetic.

There were others who referenced their own familial connections to the Civil War and antebellum South. One middle-aged man described himself as a descendant of both slave and slave owner, and apologized that his generation didn’t move to take down the monuments.

Another talked about having family descended from Forrest, having the monument pointed out with pride as a child, and coming as an adult to support its removal.

“When I was little, I used to play in Forrest Park,” a young black man remembered. “I thought he must have been a great guy.” Why else would the city erect a giant statue to him, after all?

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The final speaker was a middle-aged African-American woman who read a famous letter from Confederate soldier Achilles Clark, who served under Forrest at Fort Pillow and recounted soon after that the general had ordered the massacre of black Union troops.

The meeting was organized by Memphis activist Tami Sawyer, and drew a diverse group of what appeared to be several hundred people at 6 p.m. on a Wednesday night, mostly filling up the large school auditorium.

Sawyer talked about the political context of these monuments’ original dedication, Forrest as a Jim Crow monument, Davis as a monument to civil rights resistance. She talked about growing up in the presence of these monuments and not wanting the same for younger family members.

“My nieces should be able to run through the park free, not in the shadow of men who would have sold them into slavery, into brothels,” she said.

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And while speakers talked of taking down the monuments “immediately,” she set a kind of goal post, referencing April 4, 2018, the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination, and not wanting commemoration ceremonies to be marred by the continuing presence of Confederate monuments in proximity.

The Jefferson Davis and Nathan Bedford Forrest monuments are linked in this pursuit, but there are crucial differences between them. The Davis statue is akin to many of the other Confederate monuments that have been coming down around the country, and was ignored in Memphis for far too long. It should always have been the tip of the spear in this local movement.

Forrest is a more complex matter. He does not just represent the Confederacy generally. His crimes were more specific -- the slave trade, Fort Pillow, the Klan. But his historical connection to Memphis is also more profound. The intimacy is tangible. It takes the form of bones.

And that may have been what was most striking about last night. Roughly 50 citizens spoke in the public comment portion of the meeting, all in favor of removing these monuments. Many referenced the movement’s slogan/hashtag, “Take ’Em Down.” Not a single one made reference to the remains of Forrest and his wife that are buried in the park along with the monument, moved there a century ago by the Sons of Confederate Veterans from their original resting place in Elmwood Cemetery. “Dig ’Em Up” is a tougher rallying cry. Perhaps many aren’t aware of this potential complication. But it suggested a lack of readiness for the extent of the fight ahead, of the potential gravity of the undertaking and how fraught it will be.

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One person who was aware was Sawyer, who alluded to the issue in her opening remarks and then addressed it when asked afterward.

“Other people violated that last will and testament, someone else made that error,” said Sawyer of the presence of the Forrest remains beneath the monument, suggesting that removing the public monuments was the necessity, and that if that in turn necessitates transferring remains back to Elmwood, then those who first disrupted Forrest’s resting place bear the responsibility and blame.

As for next steps in this movement, last night’s meeting was intended to be more than a place for shared testimony. It was also used to add names to a petition for removal and gather names for future action, directing volunteers to areas of need that match their skills and interests, such as legal, community engagement, and communications.

Sawyer put together this meeting, but hopes to have company at the head of this movement.

“What I’m hoping is that people will come forward as leaders,” she said.

Meanwhile, at City Hall: Controversy continues with the "Beale Street Bucks" program. ... There was progress on the Overton Park Greensward parking front. ... A plan to eliminate funding for the Urban Arts Commission was put on hold. 

Quick-and-Pop: After a couple of weeks of looking through the Grizzlies back pages, I turned back toward the present and future with a Pick-and-Pop double dip yesterday. Here’s a column on the team’s summer, and a Pick-and-Popcast conversation with Sports 56’s Peter Edmiston on the same subject.

Happening in Memphis Today: "Cabin in the Sky," director Vincente Minnelli's 1943 musical whose all-black cast includes Ethel Waters, Lena Horne, Louis Armstrong and others, screens at the Brooks Museum of Art as part of their "banned in Memphis" series of films that were barred from Memphis upon initial release.

The Fadeout: Albert “Prodigy” Johnson, one half of the Queens rap duo Mobb Deep, died yesterday at age 42 after being hospitalized due to complications related to sickle cell anemia. The duo’s 1995 album “The Infamous” and its single “Shook Ones (Part II)” are hip-hop classics. The latter has penetrated the wider culture on a least a couple of occasions, prominently featured in the Eminem movie “8Mile” and referenced in the musical “Hamilton,” where Lin-Manuel Miranda borrows the song’s lyric “I’m only 19/But my mind is old.” I wore out a 12-inch single of this song when it first came out, during my college radio days, and spin it in Prodigy’s honor today.

Reach Chris Herrington at chris.herrington@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter at @chrisherrington and @herringtonNBA.