The Memphis City Council voted Wednesday to sell two city parks where confederate statues are located, including this statue of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, located in Health Sciences Park.
(REUTERS/Karen Pulfer Focht)
The Memphis City Council voted Wednesday to sell two city parks where confederate statues are located and crews have already started work to remove them.
Mayor Jim Strickland confirmed on Twitter that both Health Sciences and Fourth Bluff Parks “have been sold. Operations on those sites tonight are being conducted by a private entity and are compliant with state law.”
The council “unanimously approved the sale to an unknown entity without disclosing the details of what they were voting on,” The Commercial Appeal reported.
Within minutes of the vote Wednesday night, a heavy police presence was seen near the Health Sciences Park — where a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate Army general, is located.
WHICH CONFEDERATE STATUES WERE REMOVED? A RUNNING LIST
The other statue, of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, is located at Fourth Bluff Park.
Council member Janis Fullilove told the newspaper it was a “crazy, crazy, crazy night.”
“It’s really going down in history that this is the night they are going to take the statues down,” Fullilove said. “It’s a historic moment.”
A statue of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States, stands in Memphis Park, formerly named Confederate Park, in Memphis, Tennessee.
(REUTERS/Brian Snyder)
Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen said in a statement that he commends the city “for finding a way to legally remove statues from an era that is not representative of Memphis today & have remained an affront to most of the citizens of Memphis.”
CONFEDERATE MONUMENT REMOVAL COSTS PILING UP FOR CITIES
Earlier this month, the city filed a petition asking for judicial review of the Tennessee Historical Commission’s denial of a request to remove the Forrest statue, which The Commercial Appeal reported “has a long and controversial history in Memphis.”
Forrest was a slave trader, Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan leader who became influential in the city’s growth after the Civil War.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
