When the city of Memphis wants a Confederate statue to be removed, you can be damn sure they’ll find a way to do it. And such was the case when not one, but two Confederate statues were removed from parks in Memphis, Tennessee Wednesday night when the City Council found a loophole in the state law that prevented their removal, The Washington Post reports.
The hasty removal was accomplished before the city could honor Martin Luther King this upcoming spring, who was assassinated in the city of Memphis almost 50 years ago on April 4th, 1968. The first statue removed was of Confederate Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest, a slave trader involved in the foundation of the Ku Klux Klan, according to the Post. The second statue removed was of Jefferson Davis, who was president of the Confederacy.
Mayor Jim Strickland released a statement regarding the removal of the statues, explaining the reasoning behind their decision.
“It’s important to know why we’re here,” wrote Strickland. “The Forrest statue was placed in 1904, as Jim Crow segregation laws were enacted. The Davis statue was placed in 1964, as the Civil Rights Movement changed our country. The statues no longer represent who we are as a modern, diverse city with momentum. As I told the Tennessee Historical Commission in October, our community wants to reserve places of reverence for those we honor.” Memphis had been denied a waiver back in October that would have allowed the removal of the statues.
How exactly did the city “two-step” around the state law? The Tennessee Heritage Protection Act of 2016 says that “‘No statue, monument, memorial, nameplate, or plaque’ erected ‘on public property’ in honor of certain military conflicts and their heroes may be removed without the permission of two-thirds of the board of the commission,” according to the Post. So, Strickland and city officials decided to take the part mentioning “public” property quite seriously. A private nonprofit corporation called Memphis Greenspace Inc. was set up, and Strickland was approved to sell the two parks with the statues to the private group for $1,000 each.
Cranes rolled in that Wednesday night on the private property, which had been public only that morning and promptly removed the statues. *cue mic drop*