Memphis won’t rename parks honoring Confederacy

Mayor Willie Herenton, who like 60 percent of the residents of Memphis is black, said public fighting over the park names would only succeed in hurting the city’s image, which still is tarnished by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.

“We do not need another event that portrays Memphis nationally as a city still racially polarized and fighting the Civil War all over again,” he said. “We have a national image that must be protected.”

But a growing squabble over the park names and statues of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Southern Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest could continue.

Herenton said he will ask the City Council to give the parks to the University of Tennessee and the nonprofit Riverfront Development Corp. The park bearing Forrest’s name is beside the campus of the university’s medical school.

If the university or the development corporation want to rename the parks, “that’s their decision,” Herenton said.

“But the mayor represents a city,” he added. “I may not give you my views on whether they should be renamed or not, but the city of Memphis should not rename these parks.”

Herenton said he is “not interested in burying history.”

“The statues remind us of the Old South … I’m interested in moving Memphis forward as a leader in the New South,” he said.

Critics, many of whom are black, argue that Confederate, Davis and Forrest parks honor those who supported slavery and fought to destroy the Union. After the Civil War, Forrest was an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

Others, including the Sons of Confederate Veterans and some of Forrest’s descendants, argue that the parks represent a part of the city’s history and should be left alone.

As an example of trouble the squabble could cause, Herenton held up a letter “from some guy in the Ku Klux Klan” that threatened a funeral for Forrest “in full KKK regalia” if his statue is moved.

Forrest’s remains and those of his wife were relocated from a cemetery and placed beneath the statue when the park was named for him 100 years ago.

Proponents of changing the park names and moving the statues have also promised protests and have invited such activists as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to join them.

The Center City Commission, a group that promotes downtown development, asked the City Council last month to rename the parks. But the council sidestepped a contentious vote on the parks when its attorney said only Herenton had the authority to change the names.

Giving up the parks would require the council’s approval, though.

University spokeswoman Elizabeth Maynard-Garrett said the medical school wants to keep Forrest Park as open space and no discussions have been held about renaming it.

The university later issued a statement reserving comment until the mayor’s proposal could be reviewed.

Lee Millar of the N.B. Forrest Camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans said his group would oppose any moves by the university or riverfront corporation to rename the parks.

“If it comes up there, then we’ve got the problems again,” Millar said.

It was not clear if the city can legally give away Confederate and Davis parks since they are on a strip of land that Memphis’ founders signed over to the city in the early 1800s to be used as a “public promenade.”

Heirs of the founders along with a group called Friends of Our Riverfront are fighting the city’s efforts for private development on the riverfront site.