Memphis workers exhume the remains of KKK leader from city park

Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife’s remains have been in the park since 1904

Memphis workers start to exhume the body of a Ku Klux Klan leader in a city park (AP)

Memphis workers have begun to exhume the body of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife from a park following the removal of the man’s monument.

The general, who was a slave trader and early Ku Klux Klan leader, has been buried in Health Sciences Park in Memphis, Tennessee, with his wife, Mary Ann, for more than 100 years. So the removal of the graves will take several weeks for workers to execute.

Workers started to remove the couple’s remains on Tuesday morning following a lengthy legal battle. The bodies will be reinterred with the statue at the National Confederate Museum at Elm Springs in Columbia, Tennessee.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group that owns the museum, was overseeing and paying for the transfer of the Confederate general and his wife’s bodies.

Lee Miller, a spokesperson for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, confirmed the move when speaking to Fox13 Memphis.

“Initially, it was pretty sad that someone would want to remove a monument because everyone’s history is important to everybody but some people don’t realise that and they just want to get rid of history, which is wrong, and then secondly removing a grave, that’s not a good idea either, but as things progressed, we reached a compromise,” he said.

Initially, the family wanted the remains of the general and his wife to stay in Memphis, but it was ultimately decided to move the bodies to a museum, which was located close to where Mr Forrest grew up.

“He’ll be moving to a better place where he can be visited, respected, protected … it’ll be a good site for the general,” Mr Millar told the local news station.

The remains of Mr Forrest and his wife were moved from a cemetery and buried under a statue in Health Sciences Park in 1904.

But in December 2017, the city of Memphis took down the statue after selling the park to a non-profit group amid backlash of the monument memorialising the Confederate general. A statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis was also removed at that time.

The sale of the park to the non-profit group Memphis Greenspace allowed the city to go around a state law that bars the removal of historical monuments from public spaces. A Nashville judge ruled the city and non-profit acted legally in the removal of the two statues.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans fought the removal of both statues, citing Tennessee’s cemetery law and Heritage Protection Law when making the claims.

Ultimately, the group reached an agreement with the non-profit in 2020 to have the general and his wife’s remains removed from the park and placed in another area.

Health Sciences Park has been a prominent location for Black Lives Matter protests in recent years, with activists previously painting the words “Black Lives Matter” on the walkway leading up to the tomb.

The removal of the bodies will last three weeks and likely will not be done in time forJuneteenth Festival, a celebration of the emancipation of slaves, which will be taking place in the park on 18 June and 19 June.