Quote:Since the monument honoring Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest was unveiled in a city park in 2000, critics have called it a symbol of hate. Vandals littered it with trash, pelted it with cinder blocks and tried to pull it down with ropes before it was moved to a private cemetery. Finally in March, the bust vanished. A historical society called Friends of Forrest has offered a $20,000 reward for its return, and vowed to replace it with a new bust on a taller pedestal, guarded by an iron fence and a surveillance camera.
General Forrest is recognized as a brilliant cavalry officer, he was accused of war crimes for allowing his forces to massacre black Union troops who had surrendered after the Battle of Fort Pillow in Tennessee in 1864.
Following the war, he joined the newly formed Ku Klux Klan and became its first grand wizard.
“Some people think he was one of the most successful military practitioners of the war, and say that trumps all else he did later in life,” said Brian Steel Wills, the director of the Civil War Center at Kennesaw State University in Georgia and a history professor there. “Others condemn him out of hand as evil incarnate and dismiss him. Of course, he’s far more complex than either extreme.”
“Glorifying Nathan B. Forrest here is like glorifying a Nazi in Germany,” said Rose Sanders, a lawyer and local radio host. “For Selma, of all places, to have a big monument to a Klansman is totally unacceptable.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/us/fig....html?_r=1
http://www.change.org/petitions/selma-ci...o-kkk-hate (Click here to sign a petition)
