UPDATE 29 JAN 2018: In 2013 the City of Memphis renamed this park Memphis Park. Four years later in Dec 2017, The City of Memphis sold this park to a nonprofit. The nonprofit removed all the Confederate memorials and has renamed the park Four Bluff Park.
The Memphis City Council found a clever way around a Tennessee state law passed hurredly to protect monuments and memorials to the Confederacy that were being considered for removal or relocation in the aftermath of the murder of nine African American church-goers in Charleston by an avowed white supremacist and a violent white supremacist march in Charlottesville VA: It sold the land to a nonprofit, which, as a private entity, could remove the statues from its land.
From the New York Times: (
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"Confederate Statues in Memphis Are Removed After City Council Vote
By DANIEL CONNOLLY and VIVIAN WANGDEC. 20, 2017
MEMPHIS — The City Council here voted Wednesday to sell two city parks with Confederate monuments, clearing the way for two statues to be removed before the city commemorates the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Mayor Jim Strickland first announced the sales of Health Sciences Park and Memphis Park on Twitter.
“History is being made in Memphis tonight,” he said at a news conference later in the evening.
Health Sciences Park had a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and an early member of the Ku Klux Klan, which was removed around 9 p.m. local time.
By 10:30 p.m., cranes had maneuvered into Memphis Park and around a statue of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy during the Civil War. About 15 minutes later, a crane hoisted the statue onto a truck as a crowd cheered and struck up songs, including “Hit the road Jack.”
The removal of the statues came not only as Memphis prepares for the 50th anniversary of the death of Dr. King, who was assassinated on April 4, 1968, while visiting the city, but also amid a sweeping national debate about the significance of Confederate monuments and whether their removal would be an erasure of history or a righting of past wrongs.
Around the country, cities have removed symbols ranging from the Confederate flag, to memorials of rank-and-file Confederate soldiers, to statues of prominent generals including Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
Within an hour of the Memphis City Council’s vote, police officers and cranes were deployed to Health Sciences Park.
Just after 9 p.m., the crane began to lift the statue into the air, the horse and rider dangling above the pedestal. Onlookers cheered. Someone yelled, “Now drop it!” Others chanted: “Hey hey! Ho ho! That racist statue has got to go!”
Kyle Veazey, a spokesman for Mr. Strickland, wrote on Twitter that the statue was lifted at 9:01 p.m., an apparent nod to the city’s 901 area code. One of the groups that led the movement to remove the statues was called Take ’Em Down 901.
“Just to finally get to this moment is overwhelming,” Tami Sawyer, a leader of the group, said.
“I looked Nathan Bedford in the eyes and shed a tear for my ancestors,” she said, recalling the history of African-Americans from slavery to modern incarceration.
Bruce McMullen, the chief legal officer for the city, said in an interview on Wednesday night that the parks had been sold to Memphis Greenspace, a nonprofit led by Van D. Turner Jr., a Shelby County commissioner.
The nonprofit seems to have been created expressly for the purpose of buying the parks: It filed its incorporation papers in October, Mr. Strickland said. Mr. Turner did not immediately return a request for comment.
The city sold Health Sciences Park in its entirety, Mr. McMullen said, and it sold its interest in an easement in Memphis Park. Each was sold for $1,000, he said.
The transfer of the parks to private ownership effectively allowed the city to skirt the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act, a state law that prohibits the removal, relocation or renaming of memorials on public property.
In October, the Tennessee Historical Commission, a state agency that oversees the law, voted to deny the city’s application for a waiver of the law regarding the two statues, the television station WREG reported.
Representative Steve Cohen, Democrat of Tennessee, praised the City Council’s move, calling the statues “not representative of Memphis today” and “an affront to most of the citizens of Memphis.”
“As we approach the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, it’s important that these relics of the Confederacy and defenders of slavery don’t continue to be displayed in prominent places in our city,” Mr. Cohen said in a statement.
Mr. McMullen said another motivation for removing the statues was ensuring that they would not create an “incendiary type of environment” during the city’s commemorations of Dr. King in April.
He dismissed the criticism of some groups, including the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who had accused the city of willfully violating state law. He said the city had been weighing the sale of the parks to a private group for a year.
“We’ve always felt that we had a right to sell city property. We have in the past, and we probably will in the future,” Mr. McMullen said. “And what we did was perfectly legal and right.”
At the news conference, Mr. Strickland echoed Mr. McMullen’s comments. The mayor said the City Council had undertaken a long, complex process to ensure that the handoff was done legally, including passing a law in September that allowed Memphis to sell the parks for less than their market value.
But he also invoked the violent protests in Charlottesville, Va., in August as the “sea change” that spurred those efforts to success. One woman was killed after white supremacists rallied in Charlottesville to protest the planned removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee.
In the days after the deadly rally, Mr. Strickland said, “we saw an avalanche of support come together behind our efforts.”
“But this day, this day should be more about where we go from here,” he said. “I want to say this loud and clear: Though some of our city’s past is painful, we are all in charge of our city’s future.”"
ORIGINAL WAYMARK:
Blasterz are a little sick when they think about historic Civil War cannon being given away to be melted down in a WWII scrap metal drive, but we realize it was a different time and a different national mood in 1942.
After the end of WWII, four WWII-used cannon were given by the US back to the city of Memphis to be installed in Confederate Park. Sixty years later, those 1940s-vintage cannon were removed and replicas of the original Civil War-era cannon were reinstalled, after a multi-year fundraising effort mounted by the local Memphis chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
Here is an article about the return of the historic replica cannon from the Memphis Commercial-Appeal: (
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"Civil War look returns with cannons at Memphis Confederate Park
Kevin McKenzie
12:00 AM, Sep 6, 2012
Just in time for the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, four cannons resembling those used during the War between the States were installed in Confederate Park in Downtown Memphis on Wednesday.
Just as intended, the replica artillery immediately sparked a discussion rooted in history, in this case, between 62-year-old, bearded twin brothers born in a former hospital that served as Confederate headquarters in Vicksburg, Miss.
"To me, it's a six-pound Napoleon," said David Hoxie, insisting that one of the new cannons is a type named after a grandson of French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.
"It's not," said his brother, Danny Hoxie. "It's a six-pound gun," he insisted.
The Hoxies were two of several members of the Nathan Bedford Forrest Camp, Sons of the Confederate Veterans group that paused in nearly 100-degree heat while two 12-pound field howitzers, a three-inch ordnance rifle and the six-pound field gun were bolted in place at the park overlooking Mud Island and the Mississippi River.
"It's a six-pounder," said Allen Doyle, commander of the Forrest Camp, settling the disagreement between the brothers.
Doyle, 58, an insurance agent, provided more of the history that the cannon are meant to inspire.
"We want to make sure that people knew that Memphis was not defended by original cannons, but they were commemorated here after the war was over and the park (dedicated in 1908) was established here," he said. "There were actually six guns in the park, much larger than this, but this is as close as we could get."
In 1942, during World War II, the city donated the surplus Civil War cannons originally at the park to a scrap metal drive. After that war, six World War II cannons, now stored and slated for renovation, replaced them.
Led by the local Sons of Confederate Veterans, and including the Shelby County Historical Commission and the Riverfront Development Corp., the project to return more appropriate cannons took about a decade and was financed with about $72,000 in private donations, said Lee Millar, chairman of the project.
The cast iron carriages supporting the new cannon reproductions were donated by Shiloh National Military Park, the Tennessee site of a bloody battle in April 1862. Lee Cole, a 53-year-old Arlington blacksmith helping to install the cannons, said the national park is replacing aging carriages with sturdier ductile iron.
Steen Cannons, a family-owned company in Ashland, Ky., made the new cannons and stays busy supplying artillery representing a variety of wars to national parks, towns, cemeteries and other customers, said Marshall Steen, 60, company owner. During the Civil War, carriages were wooden, he said.
The cannon types at Confederate Park represent those used by two Confederate artillery units — Bankhead's Battery, formed in 1861 by Memphis attorney Smith P. Bankhead, and the Appeal Battery, sponsored in 1862 by The Appeal newspaper (an ancestor of The Commercial Appeal) — according to Millar.
However, there were no Confederate cannons overlooking the bluffs at the park on June 6, 1862, when eight cotton-clad Confederate boats were defeated in 90 minutes in a naval battle with eight ironclad Union ships.
"There was a four-gun field battery that was here, but they left and had gone to Shiloh by then," Millar said."
Steen Cannons made the replica guns: (
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"Cannons for Confederate Park, Memphis
During the Civil War, or more aptly named The War for Southern Independence, there were cannons stationed here on this ground in Confederate Park in downtown Memphis, and after the war some surplus Confederate cannons were placed in the park. These were later donated by the City to the WW2 scrap drive (1942). After that war, surplus WW2 cannons were placed in the park but these have now been removed, allowing for the return of replica Civil War cannons to be placed there.
The N. B. Forrest Camp 215, Sons of Confederate Veterans, has undertaken a fund-raising drive to return four replica Civil War cannons to Confederate Park. The cannon tubes (barrels) will be supplied by Steen Cannon & Ordnance Works. The four replica cannon will represent two of the many significant artillery batteries that were raised in Memphis at the outbreak of the War Between the States.
The first artillery unit raised was Bankhead’s Battery. This unit was formed May 8th, 1861 by Memphis attorney Smith P. Bankhead. It included four cannon: two 6lb field cannons and two 12lb field howitzers. These were manufactured by the Quinby & Robinson Company of Memphis.
The officers of this battery were also attorneys : 1st Lieutenant W. Y. C. Humes, 2nd Lt. J. C. McDavitt, 2nd Lt. William B. Greenlaw, 2nd Lt. William L. Scott.
The unit served at such engagements as Shiloh, Stone’s River, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, Atlanta & Franklin. Smith Bankhead eventually rose to the rank of general, and district chief of artillery. After the war he returned to Memphis and became Deputy Attorney for the city.
Two of the replica cannons placed in Confederate Park, which is next to the Univ of Memphis School of Law, appropriately represent Bankhead’s Battery.
The second significant artillery unit raised in Memphis was the Appeal Battery. Sponsored by Memphis’ daily newspaper, The Appeal, (later the Commercial Appeal), the battery was mustered into service by Capt. W.C. Bryan on May 6th, 1862. Ten members of the staff of the Appeal, half the employees, joined the battery.
The unit was issued four cannons in Memphis: two 3? Iron Ordnance Rifles and two 12lb bronze field howitzers. These likely came from the Quinby & Robinson Company of Memphis.
The unit served gallantly at the battle of Corinth, Miss. and Vicksburg, Miss, among others.
This battery was reactivated during World War I and served with distinction in France.
Cannons representing the famous Appeal Battery will be one of the additions to the historical setting of Confederate Park.
Steen Cannon and Ordnance Works is providing four new decorative cannons to the park; two 12-pounder field howitzers that were originally made by Quinby and Robinson of Memphis and one 6-pounder of the 1841 style and marked Quinby and Robinson and one 3-inch ordnance Rifle."