Forrest Civil Rights Leader?

5fish

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I found this interesting article about the Forrest being promoted as one of the "First Civil Rights Leaders" by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. It a good short articles to links from where he got his information on Forrest comments...


snip...

In an 1869 newspaper interview with a reporter from the Louisville Courier-Journal, Forrest also disclosed a financial interest in the Wanderer, the so-called "last American slave ship" that brought some 400 enslaved Africans to the U.S. in 1858, decades after the U.S. had outlawed the importation of slaves. (Read article here.)

snip...

Looking at Forrest's background, it's undisputed that Forrest had been a wealthy slave owner and slave trader. A Memphis City Directory ad from the mid-1850s for his company, Forrest & Maples, lists "Negroes Sold On Commission," promising "the highest market price always paid on good stock."

snip... He was trying to get captive labor...

"He wasn't trying to lead a civil rights movement," Wills said in a telephone interview with NewsChannel 5. "He was trying to figure out how to get his world back into some semblance of order and control."

snip...

"I am opposed to it under any and all circumstances, and in our convention urged our party not to commit themselves at all on the subject,"
he responded. But the right to vote had been taken from the Confederates. With that in mind, Forrest added, "If the negroes vote to enfranchise us I do not think I would favor their disenfranchisement. We will stand by those who help us. And here I want you to understand distinctly, I am not an enemy to the negro. We want him here among us. He is the only laboring class we have." (Read article here.)

snip...
Forrest suggested move slave ships...

Forrest suggested that the slave ships could be sent back across the Atlantic in search of Africans to work the fields of the South. They are "the most imitative creatures in the world, and if you put them in squads of ten, with one experienced leader in each squad, they soon will revive our country." He explained that "the prisoners taken in war over there can all be turned over to us and emigrate and be freemen here." (Read article here.)


snip... From Gen. Pillow...

"My advice would be to discard all partisan views, to disband all colored political organizations. It was these colored political organizations -- in hostility to the white race of the south -- that produced the color-line of the white race of the south."

There is more in the article about Black Labor in the south... and if the Republicans had embraced the White southerners instead of politics of race.
 

5fish

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This is wrong or incorrect... Forrest was not about racial equality to him they were about cheap labor and minding their place. He was against universal suffrage for Southern Blacks... Forrest was no 21st century man... this is from

https://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/nathan-bedford-forrest.html

Forrest was not a 21st Century man who believed in racial equality; he remained a man of his time, sharing the almost-universal view of white Europeans and Americans in the 19th Century that Anglo-Saxons were superior to other peoples, but neither was Forrest a reactionary racist who sought a return to slavery. Forrest worked to accept the end of slavery and the social changes resulting from the war as indicated by his words to his men in his 1865 farewell address. A recent biographer of Forrest says “The reality is that over the length of his lifetime Nathan Bedford Forrest's racial attitudes probably developed more, and more in the direction of liberal enlightenment, than those of most other Americans in the nation's history.
 

rittmeister

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This is wrong or incorrect... Forrest was not about racial equality to him they were about cheap labor and minding their place. He was against universal suffrage for Southern Blacks... Forrest was no 21st century man... this is from

https://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/nathan-bedford-forrest.html

Forrest was not a 21st Century man who believed in racial equality; he remained a man of his time, sharing the almost-universal view of white Europeans and Americans in the 19th Century that Anglo-Saxons were superior to other peoples, but neither was Forrest a reactionary racist who sought a return to slavery. Forrest worked to accept the end of slavery and the social changes resulting from the war as indicated by his words to his men in his 1865 farewell address. A recent biographer of Forrest says “The reality is that over the length of his lifetime Nathan Bedford Forrest's racial attitudes probably developed more, and more in the direction of liberal enlightenment, than those of most other Americans in the nation's history.
looks like there are a lot not 21st century men in your senate, don't you think?
 

diane

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Well, it's a little unfair to put Pillow's tone deaf squib in with Forrest. Pillow was one of the invited speakers for the Polebearers barbecue where Forrest spoke. Pillow was there plugging white supremacy and vote Democrat for more of it, but Forrest's speech was much different. He had, before the meeting, met quietly with black leaders of Memphis on the issue of recent race riots and racially motivated violence. One of the men he spoke with was the leader of a violent black group who were basically a version of the klan. Everyone agreed there must be a path made for reconciliation and peace. Pillow didn't meet with anybody because, well, he was Pillow.

The speech Forrest gave has been published many times and in several different forms, but it was a very remarkable speech. He didn't talk about politics, he talked about working together to make a better future for both races. In it, he opposed segregation, recognized black voting rights and that blacks were now equal to whites, that they were born Southerners as he was, they were all Americans under one flag, and that if any needed his help he was there to serve them. And he also did a perfectly shocking thing for the day - he gave a black lady a peck on the cheek. That small kiss publicly acknowledged black women were equal to white women. Forrest received an avalanche of criticism from his former troopers, his friends, and everybody else who could take up a pen and write a letter to the editor. He did not retract anything.

To say he was a civil rights activist is really adding more to an already over-loaded mythology, but that his views and attitudes had changed radically is undeniable. A year or so before Forrest gave this speech he had become a Christian and had been baptised into the Presbyterian church, which is the one he'd been raised in. Prior to that conversion he had left matters of religion up to the women of his family. He always respected religion and had services for his troops, but he was not himself a religious man. Many churches preached what the slave owners wanted to hear - that they were good people doing the right thing - but Forrest studied the Bible for himself and noted in particular the verses saying there was no difference in God's eyes between master and slave, Greek or Roman, etc. He concluded he could not continue to believe he was above blacks because there was no such distinction among Christians. For a man of his background, it was a dramatic change, and a real one.
 

5fish

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Here in this speech, I tried to google that Polebear association too...


If you do a Google search for "Independent Order of Pole-Bearers Association" you will get a short list of sites that include the above-cited speech. The sites include an SCV Camp, Dixie Outfitters, the History Channel, and an array of politically-inspired websites. I would like to know where I can find the original speech.

Here is this take on the speech...


On July 5, 1875, Lou Lewis, a former slave, approached former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest with a bouquet of flowers while on stage at the Independent Order of Pole-Bearers Association’s fair in Memphis, Tennessee. The Pole-Bearers Association consisted of formerly enslaved people and in some ways preceded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The bouquet served as a peace offering from the freed people to an iconic southern planter and Confederate officer. Forrest took the bouquet saying, “I accept the flowers as a memento of reconciliation between the white and colored races of the southern states.” Forrest became the first white man to speak to the Association and was invited to the podium with genuine anticipation. During Forrest’s short speech, he advocated for African Americans’ right to vote, promoted cooperation between the two races, and pledged his allegiance to the African American cause. “We were born on the same soil, breathe the same air, and live on the same land,” Forrest exclaimed, “Why then can we not be brothers?” Forrest thanked Lewis for the bouquet, gave her a kiss on the cheek, and exited the stage.
 

5fish

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Here is another take on the whole story...


Instead, African-American men found their needs met by the establishment of many Black fraternal associations and lodges, many of which provided a burial service, perhaps with a brass band or fife and drum band for their dues-paying members. One such organization appeared in Memphis during the 1870’s, an organization known as the Independent Order of Pole Bearers, the name presumably resulting from a misspelling of “pall bearers.” This organization, which featured drummers and occasionally martial parades through the streets of Memphis, spread rapidly, with chapters appearing in rural communities of Shelby County such as Capleville, Bridgewater and Brunswick, then into Fayette County, a number of counties in Mississippi, and even one in Oklahoma.
 

5fish

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There do seem to be Black burial societies in the 19th century...


At the turn of the 19th Century, Black churches began to form Burial Societies to assist their congregation in preplanning funeral services, and funeral parlors were among some of the first businesses set up by African-Americans after the abolition of slavery.

Today Black funeral homes in the US still maintain this rich heritage of funeral service. The trade association that represents this heritage is the National Funeral Directors & Morticians Association (NFD&MA) which is the world’s largest and oldest national association of African American funeral directors, morticians, and embalmers.


Throughout Charleston’s history, Black communities have been denied equal access to land and financial resources for the dignified burial of their family members. In response, groups of freedmen began forming mutual aid organizations, known as burial societies, in the early 19th century to create their own cemeteries and help defray burial costs. Many of these societies continued to operate after the abolition of slavery as important social institutions for Black autonomy and celebration of cultural identity, some of which are still active today. From the 1850s through the 1950s, many African American burial societies established cemeteries on the upper peninsula in an area now known as the Charleston Cemetery Historic District. Today, this collection of cemeteries comprises one of the most intact landscapes of its kind in the country and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
 
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