Civil War General Nathan Bedford Forrest was a Grand Wizard in the Klu Klux Klan. According to GOP lawmaker Andy Holt, he also was “one of the South’s first civil rights leaders.”
The city council in Memphis, Tennessee voted to remove Forrest’s remains from under a statute in commemorating him, and all brands of fresh hell have broken loose with Southern right’s activists and Civil War nuts.
Holt decided to throw his voice into the fire Friday with an op-ed he wrote about the recent decision to remove Forrest’s remains.
He attempted to rewrite the history of Forrest:
Those that wish to stoke the fires of racial tension in america claim that Gen. Forrest was the founder of the “KKK.” This is not true. The Ku Klos of the mid-1860s was founded by Judge Thomas Jones, Frank McCord and several other Confederate veterans. Two years after its founding, Forrest was elected grand wizard of the organization. However, he never dressed in costume.
Earlier in the piece he attempted to claim that Forrest had been redeemed by Christ and that, for this reason, his monument should be spared.
Through Christ, we are called to believe in and celebrate redemption. When we recognize the life of Gen. Forrest, we are doing just that — celebrating the life of a man, redeemed through Christ. That fought for the rights of black West Tennesseans.
