As stupid as they are, most Confederate memorials strike a solemn, stately tone, incorporating elements of classical Greek sculpture to honor historical figures and capture the magnitude of human loss during the Civil War. All but one.
In a timely manner, Americans have formed a consensus that the war banner of loser secessionist is a hideous symbol of slavery, and we are – in 2015 – suddenly exceptional enough that we don’t need public artistic celebrations of those who tried to destroy the Union in the name of human chattel. The South has a lot of things to be proud of: music, tasty food, beautiful native flora….its population’s failed attempt to form The Confederate States of America is not one of them, and so does not deserve to be memorialized in our nation’s parks and pedestrian walkways. With one exception.
Poignantly located next to a barren strip of land by I-65 in Nashville, there is a statue – a massive, 25-foot fiberglass statue – surrounded by 13 Confederate state battle flags. It is the Nathan Bedford Forrest monument, the most alarming looking statue I’ve ever seen in my life, including statues of cartoon characters located inside cartoon shows.
Just look at this fucking thing:
That’s supposed to be a human being.
There are, apparently, more statues of Nathan Bedford Forrest in Tennessee than there are statues of George Washington in Virginia, or of Abraham Lincoln in Illinois, or of any other person in any other state. This just happens to be the greatest one. Despite a reputation for having singled out black Union soldiers for slaughter following their surrender and the subsequent lynchings, Forrest has been immortalized in statues across the South. His name has been lent to public institutions, including Nathan B. Forrest High in Jacksonville, Florida, all the way up until November of 2013.. Oh, The South, you big goofs, with your sleeveless shirts and junky cars and small brains.
An allegory of the American South: In 1998, a fierce racist lunatic named Jack Kershaw (who also happened to be an attorney of MLK’s assassin James Earl Ray), created a monument for a man, Tennessee-born lieutenant general Nathan Bedford Forrest. Forrest wasn’t just a general, in the confederate army, but as a hate-bonus, he was also the first Grand Wizard of the KKK.
Any way, by all accounts, the general looked like a “respectable” confederate soldier and his dapple grey steed looked exceptionally noble:
Yet, the hulking homage to the slave-trading Confederate Army and Ku Klux Klan leader features Forrest atop a golden steed that looks like it was ripped from a merry-go-round for giants, like it was crafted out of chocolate by the hand of a dumb child:
The horse seems somewhat embarrassed to be seen with the rider on his back. The effing head is larger than the torso. The statue clearly shows that Nathan Bent-out-of-shape Forest as the ‘ideal’ arch-Southerner, armed to the teeth (still having them, of course), trying to go in all directions at the same time, on an out-of-control horse. The whole mess strikes a cartoonish and inadvertently satirical tone, incorporating elements of fiberglass and foil-candy wrapper coloring that capture the raw intensity of the Southern cause.
Again, for all his fierce racism and abject evil, General Forrest was not some sort of unearthly monster, but a normal-looking man:
And yet:
The wild blue marble eyes. The bar-toothed, gaping mouth like a circular saw. His mouth stretched in a psychotic battle cry as his horse rears up with ears laid flat against its skull. Does it look like his head and his body go in opposite directions? It’s like it needs an exorcism, as the head is turning around ala Linda Blair’s. In fact, put a motor in to make the head turn around. And have it puke up pea soup and put some frickn’ lasers in the eyes.. And put it on a merry-go-round. The white racist motherfucker memorial merry-go-round.
It’s as if the Tin Man and the Burgur King King had a baby and left it out in the rain; staring helplessl and in horror at the sky, rusting into a ghastly, tin rictus grin.
The statue has caused all manner of fulmination in Nashville. The monument is not popular in Tennessee and has ben repeatedly defaced over the last two decades—it’s marked by graffiti and bullet holes. People who hate the statue have tried to topple it, they tried to cut the legs off of it, and they tried to pull it down with a train on nearby railroad tracks.
The statue is now surrounded by a fence and protected by a heavily padlocked gate. Kershaw himself was not concerned with the opinions of those who wanted it taken down. “Somebody needs to say a good word for slavery,” he was quoted as saying to the League of the South, a group known for its secessionist messages and anti-immigration rallies.. In fact, it’s behind a gate with six padlocks on it.
Forrest, by the way, never considered himself a racist or nothing, despite his dedication to using violence and terror to keep blacks in their place. As he explained, “I am not an enemy of the negro,” Forrest said. “We want him here among us; he is the only laboring class we have.” Now how on earth could anyone have a problem with keeping his statue? Nathan Bedford Forrest was not just a Confederate army officer who committed war crimes, not just the founder of the Ku Klux Klan, but, before the War of Northern Aggression, he was also the biggest slave dealer in the United States.
Residents understandably want this thing gone. I say, tough shit. Tear down every statue of every other general, father, son, and daughter of the Confederacy, but leave up the insane goofy hell-rictus of Nathan Bedford Forrest, because in its misshapen hideousness, it is the most fitting monument to the ugly idiocy of southern history.
The only other monument we need is possibly smoke-blackened two-story plantation-mansion chimney, a piece of railroad iron twisted around a tree, and a sign “if you keep forgetting that you lost, we can always come marching through again”.