TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Stacey Shrader Joslin on Nov 23, 2020

The bones of Nathan Bedford Forrest and wife should soon be exhumed from where his mounted statue once stood in Memphis, the Commercial Appeal reports. Lawyers for Memphis Greenspace, the owners of the land where Forrest is buried, and lawyers for Forrest's remaining descendants, filed court documents Friday asking that the pair be disinterred and transferred to the Sons of the Confederate Veterans for reburial at the National Confederate Museum at Elm Springs. Forrest, a Confederate cavalryman during the Civil War, early Ku Klux Klan leader and slave trader, died in Memphis in 1877. He originally was buried at Elmwood but in 1904 was reburied under the statue during a veterans gathering in Memphis. Last year, the Sons of the Confederate Veterans took possession of the statue, which also will be re-erected at the museum. The parties are awaiting final approval of the plan from Chancellor Walter Evans.