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https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/memphis-confederate-statues/548990/
Bottom line is Memphis is over 2/3 black and there's no good reason the people of Memphis need to keep monuments to slavers and Kluckers in their public parks. Blacks had no say when these monuments to racists and white supremacists were erected during the Jim Crow era, and the State of Tennessee again removed their voice in deciding to ignore the people of Memphis and rule that Memphis had to keep these monuments in place. I'm glad Memphis found a way to do what they've tried to do by working with the state for years now. The State refused to negotiate in good faith, passing laws further removing the voice of the people in Memphis, and so the city of Memphis found a way to do what the citizens of Memphis demanded. The world is better off with those monuments gone.
When Memphians woke up Wednesday, they lived in a city that owned Health Science Park and Fourth Bluff Park, and that featured prominent public statues of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and General Nathan Bedford Forrest. When they woke up the morning after, neither was true.
In a surprise move Wednesday evening, Memphis’s city council voted to sell the two parks to a new private nonprofit corporation that will run them, on condition that they keep the parks public. Mayor Jim Strickland signed a contract with the nonprofit, Memphis Greenspace, on Friday, and the council ratified it. Soon afterward, Greenspace, which was incorporated in October, began removing the statues,
Bottom line is Memphis is over 2/3 black and there's no good reason the people of Memphis need to keep monuments to slavers and Kluckers in their public parks. Blacks had no say when these monuments to racists and white supremacists were erected during the Jim Crow era, and the State of Tennessee again removed their voice in deciding to ignore the people of Memphis and rule that Memphis had to keep these monuments in place. I'm glad Memphis found a way to do what they've tried to do by working with the state for years now. The State refused to negotiate in good faith, passing laws further removing the voice of the people in Memphis, and so the city of Memphis found a way to do what the citizens of Memphis demanded. The world is better off with those monuments gone.