Tennessee House Punishes Memphis For Confederate Statue Removal

NASHVILLE, TN — The Tennessee House of Representatives pulled a $250,000 appropriation to the city of Memphis Tuesday in a last-minute budget amendment aimed at punishing the city for removing two Confederate statues late last year.

The amendment sparked a fiery rebuke from Democrats, particularly those from the Bluff City, in the heavily Republican chamber.

(For more updates on this story and free news alerts for your neighborhood, sign up for your local Middle Tennessee Patch morning newsletter.)

"What this amendment does is it removes $250,000 from the budget that is designated to go to the city of Memphis for their bicentennial celebration," the amendment’s sponsor, Rep. Steve McDaniel (R-Parkers Crossroads), said. "If you recall, back in December, Memphis did something that removed historical markers in the city. It was the city of Memphis that did this, and it was full knowing it was not the will of the legislature."

In December, exploiting a loophole in the state’s so-called heritage protection law, the Memphis City Council approved the sale of two parks - Health Sciences Park, home of the statue and gravesite of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, a slave trader and early leader of the Ku Klux Klan; and an easement in Fourth Bluff Park, site of a statue of President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis - to non-profit Memphis Greenspace Inc. for $1,000 apiece with the agreement the organization continue operating the land as parks.

The sale allowed Greenspace, as a private entity, to remove the statues. Under Tennessee state law, statues and monuments in spaces owned by state or local governments can only be removed through a convoluted process that includes petitions by the local government and approval by two-thirds of the state's historical commission.

Statues on private land - which, technically, the parks now are - are not subject to the law.

During Tuesday’s debate, Rep. Antionio Parkinson, a Memphis Democrat, was cut off by boos from fellow legislators when he called the amendment “vile” and “racist” and said that his GOP colleagues treated Forrest like “a god.”

“You remove money from a city because we removed your God from our grounds," he said.

Rep. Raumesh Akbari, also a Memphis Democrat, called the move “un-Christian.”

“I know some of you all would be happy if we gave the doggone part of the state to Arkansas," she said. "Arkansas would gladly take us. But I'll tell you something: I don't support this, and I think if you do it you're being ugly. It's not fair. Memphis is a part of Tennessee. I didn't even realize how much y'all disliked Memphis till I got to this legislature.”

Rep. Andy Holt, a Dresden Republican, compared Memphis’ removal of statues to ISIS and said his “only regret about this is it's not in the tune of millions of dollars.”

The state historic commission voted Oct. 13 to reject Memphis' longstanding request to remove the statues. The city appealed that decision, but instead of waiting for a judge's ruling, executed the clever dodge.

The Memphis City Council has requested approval to remove the monuments several times in the last few years and the statues have been source of controversy for decades, as have the gravesite of Forrest and his wife, whose will made it clear they preferred to be buried at Elmwood Cemetery, but both were moved to what is now Health Sciences Park in 1904 and the statue of the general erected.

The House’s vengeance over Memphis’s removal of the statues comes a week after the same chamber voted to move the tombs of President James K. Polk and First Lady Sarah Polk from the Capitol grounds to a home built by the president’s father in Columbia, despite their wills saying they wished to be buried in Nashville, where they’ve lain on Capitol Hill since 1893.

Image via Shutterstock