Battle over Confederate symbols still simmering in Tennessee

There’s a proposal in predominantly black Memphis to rename Confederate Park, Jefferson Davis Park and Nathan Bedford Forrest Park, and to place the statues of Davis and Forrest in museums.

In Nashville, Vanderbilt University has been trying since 2002 to change the name of Confederate Memorial Hall, a dormitory built in the 1930s, but the school was stymied by a recent court decision.

Shelby County Commissioner Walter Bailey said the Confederate parks and statues offend blacks, glorify a slaveholding society and create an impression that Memphis is stuck in the past.

“We’re trying to be a booming metropolis and this gives the impression we’re stuck in magnolia times, like the Old South,” he said.

Bailey and Nashville pediatrician Eddie Hamilton said they are not trying to erase Confederate symbols, but simply to put them in a historical context.

“We shouldn’t destroy them because we need to remember the past,” said Hamilton, a Vanderbilt alumnus who pledged $50,000 to help the university try to change the name of Confederate Memorial Hall.

Bailey said he went to Germany six years ago and was impressed by how they remembered the Nazi era.

“It was in the museums. You can’t find any park memorializing Hitler,” he said.

Ron Casteel, national spokesman for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, said comparisons between the Confederacy and Nazi Germany are “political correctness gone wild.”

Casteel said Confederate history is constantly under attack and that heritage groups like his believe in honoring the history of everyone.

“It’s quite easy for someone with a political agenda to stand up and say ‘I’m offended,'” Casteel said.

In recent years, Georgia removed the Confederate battle emblem from its state flag, South Carolina removed a rebel flag from atop its Capitol and the University of Mississippi retired Colonel Rebel as its on-field mascot.

But in 2003 the Tennessee General Assembly, over the protests of black lawmakers, approved a specialty license plate imprinted with the Sons of Confederate Veterans logo, which incorporates the Confederate battle flag.

A public hearing on the proposed Memphis park changes has been scheduled for Thursday. The Center City Commission developed the name-change proposal, but the City Council has the authority to change park names.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans will mark the centennial of Forrest Park on July 8-10.

Vanderbilt’s effort to remove the word “Confederate” from the dormitory has been blocked by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, whose members donated $50,000 for the building’s construction in the 1930s.

The group’s position that the building must maintain its name was upheld by a state appeals court last month, prompting Hamilton’s offer to help the university reach a settlement.

Spokeswoman Elizabeth Latt said Vanderbilt officials are still considering their legal options in the case, and she didn’t know if the school would work with Hamilton on an effort to change the name.

Hamilton said for him the reason the name should be changed is clear.

“If I was talking about child abuse, there would be no disagreement, because there’s no two sides to it,” he said. “Slavery and segregation and racism are wrong, and there’s no two sides to that.”

United Daughters of the Confederacy state President Deanna Bryant said any comparison between Nazi Germany at the South during the Civil War is unfair. The vast majority in the South’s military were not slave owners and saw themselves as defending their homeland, she said.

“Their ancestors had fought to establish this country,” Bryant said of the Confederates. “And their descendants have fought to preserve this country we all love.”