Controversy over Memphis monuments spans centuries
By Zack McMillin
February 23, 2013
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2013/feb/23/controversy-over-memphis-monuments-spans/
Photo by Mike Maple
The Illinois Monument at Memphis National Cemetery at 3568 Townes Avenue is a granite-and-bronze
sarcophagus commissioned by the state of Illinois. Dedicated in 1929, it depicts a soldier in repose
It happened during a period of great tumult in Memphis, in an era when the dynamic of race was
transforming, power was shifting and a once-revered figure became reviled for convictions rooted in a
different historical context.
It involved a monument to a Tennessean famous for his military and political leadership, a man not from
Memphis but integral to its history. History books and newspaper articles over the years have chronicled how
a bust of Andrew Jackson, the former U.S. president and a founder of Memphis, was dedicated at Court
Square in 1859 with great fanfare but then defaced just a few years later when political sentiment had
changed radically.
As Jimmy Ogle, one of Memphis’s most public history buffs points out, the bust had included an inscription of
famous words from Jackson: “Our Federal Union: It must be preserved.”
That, according to a later newspaper account, “enraged some Confederates, who tried to erase them.” It
would be 1908 before the words were restored.
The bust now holds a place of prominence in the elaborately restored lobby of the Shelby County
Courthouse. It originally was moved there in 1921, and even was moved from place to place in Court
Square, with an 1886 newspaper clip declaring it “has been moved nearer the Main Street entrance to the
park where it will be more conspicuous.”
1 As controversy stirs anew over the public park and monument honoring another man integral to Memphis’s
history, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Ogle helped The Commercial Appeal inventory many of the people honored
around the Memphis area by monuments in public places.
Some of them are very prominent — think the Elvis Presley statue on the west end of Beale Street or the
W.C. Handy statue a few blocks east. Some are more obscure — the statue of Christopher Columbus at
Adams and Third in what Ogle says is the smallest park in the city.
There is a larger-than-life depiction of Memphis’s most significant political figure of the first half of the 20th
Century — E.H. Crump welcoming visitors into an Overton Park entrance. And there is a grand salute to the
most significant political figure of the second half of the 20th Century — W.W. Herenton greeting visitors to
the mixed-income College Park development across the street from his alma mater, LeMoyne-Owen
College.
Some, like those of Jackson and Forrest, are quite old. Others are very new, like the one of Margaret Polk,
famous for being the actual “Memphis Belle,” that was installed in 2011 at Veterans Plaza in Overton Park.
One statue that might actually fall among the “newer” installations is one at Confederate Park, of Jefferson
Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America who spent meaningful years after the Civil War
working in Memphis. He wrote a large portion of his memoir here, and two of his sons died here — at ages
17 and 11.
“Statue Of Davis Proudly Placed In Proper Park,” ran the front-page headline, on Oct. 5, 1964.
A neighboring front page story captured tumultuous current events, with Congressmen pressuring the first
southern president since Reconstruction, Lyndon Johnson, “to order massive Federal action aimed at halting
racial violence in Mississippi.”
Just 17 years later, in 1981, The Commercial Appeal would run a feature pointing out just how much had
times had changed. Most people no longer marked nor were even aware of Davis’s birthday, which had for
many years had been a holiday throughout the South.
“Not only did they all ignore the bronze figure that stands on a pedestal in the center of the park,” wrote
William Thomas, “but most people didn’t realize it was his birthday.”
In 1999, when the Memphis Parks Commission considered replacing Confederate Park with a park
dedicated to cancer survivors, it stirred debate.
In a quote that could be transported to 2013 and the current parks renaming controversy, the then director of
Memphis Heritage, Judith Johnson, said: “I know a lot of people at the end of the 20th Century feel the
Confederacy is not something that we can hold up as a value we can embrace, but we can’t erase our
history.”
The Cancer Survivors Park, with an array of sculptures, was eventually put in Audubon Park in East
Memphis.
Several people over the years have called for creating a detailed, comprehensive inventory of everyone
honored in any corner of Memphis and Shelby County, but it does not appear that one has been completed,
Ogle said.
Whitney Ransom of the UrbanArt Commission said she was also unaware of such a database. UrbanArt
does keep track of the many works it has helped bring into Memphis’s public spaces over the years, but
those tend toward the abstract and away from the personal — like the “Aspire” sculpture at Brewster
Elementary School or the “Whirl” at Vance Park conveying the current of the Mississippi River.
The newer the work, the more fresh and clean its appearance, for the most part.
An article from 1978, headlined “Statues Here Reap Varied Indignities,” described the deterioration of many
statutes around town — a leg missing from one of the children on Court Square’s “Hebe Fountain,” a
“fingerless” St. Patrick, a replacement sword on the Forrest statue because the original was stolen.
2 And, of course, that bust of Andrew Jackson, with the words chiseled off and face beaten “with hammers and
hatchets.”
Ogle, when he was director of Memphis’s parks, often received calls about how guitar strings on a different
statue of Elvis had been stripped away. A replacement statue now sits on Beale in the plaza in front of the
MLG&W building.
“So the statue at Beale now, it’s basically vandal proof,” Ogle said. “The strings are part of the body of the
guitar, and there are no tassels on his coat.”
That old Elvis statue is now housed at the Tennessee Welcome Center downtown, near another statue of
one of blues legend B.B. King.
Ogle, who conducts many public tours and gives presentations to groups throughout the area, likes to
include in his slideshow the famous shot of Presley and King posing together as young men in the 1950s at
the old Ellis Auditorium.
“Who’d have thought 60 years later both of those kids would have statues two blocks away at the Tennessee
Welcome Center,” Ogle said. “That’s what’s cool about Memphis. Two kings, too.”
But as music historians know, those two kings are not actually Memphis natives, but, rather, immigrants from
North Mississippi.
Another 1981 article actually bemoaned the fact that Memphis’s public monuments lacked the presence of
actual Memphis natives.
The source for the discovery was Ernie Lubiani, then working on a master’s degree in Southern history at the
University of Memphis: “My observations show that, hell, there’s been no Memphians honored with fullfledged statues in public places.”
Some correction to that has been seen with recent additions, like the statue of Polk, the Memphis Belle, and
the one of Herenton. And recent calls to honor others like crusading anti-lynching journalist Ida B. Wells
suggest there could be more coming.
Miraim DeCosta-Willis, professional historian and author of many books on Memphis’s African-American
history, said a meeting was held last week for an effort toward a significant monument honoring Wells. But
she would like to see more, and likes the idea, for instance, of a monument at the renovated Fairgrounds
honoring the late Larry Finch, who played and coached basketball for the University of Memphis at the MidSouth Coliseum.
“When you come right down to it, there are so many people, black and white and Chinese and whatever,
notable Memphis, who deserve to be remembered,” DeCosta-Willis said. “People’s memories are so short.”
Memphis Mayor A C Wharton showed agreement with that sentiment during a recent talk with the Memphis
Rotary Club.
“My personal philosophy is that we always need more history,” Wharton said. “So as opposed to spending a
lot of time getting rid of something, let’s give more prominence to everybody’s contributions.”
Who we honor
The following list is an inventory of some of the monuments, in public places around the Memphis area,
honoring people. This does not include monuments in less public places, like that of Danny Thomas at St.
Jude Children’s Research Hospital or the Chickasaw Indian Chief Piomingo for First Tennessee Bank.
Al Chymia Shrine Temple: depiction of a shriner comforting a child, on Shelby Oaks Drive.
Cancer Survivors Park: several installations honoring cancer survivors, at Audubon Park.
Robert R. Church Sr.: bust on east end of Beale Street of the city’s first black millionaire.
Christopher Columbus: statue at Third and Adams in city’s smallest park.
E.H. Crump: powerful political figure welcomes visitors to one Overton Park entrance.
3 Jefferson Davis: statue dedicated in 1964 at Confederate Park.
Doughboy Statue: largest statue at Overton Park’s Veterans Plaza stands for “everyman” fighting in World
War I.
Nathan Bedford Forrest: majestic depiction of Civil War general and later Memphis politician on horseback.
Willie Herenton: private funds built statue of Memphis’s first black schools superintendent and first black
mayor.
W.C. Handy: statue for “Father of the Blues” is on Beale Street.
Hiker statue: An “everyman” depiction honoring veterans of Spanish War, at Central and East Parkway.
William J. Leftwich Memorial: bust and marker at Leftwich Tennis Center at Audubon Park is for a Lt. Colonel
who died in Vietnam in 1970.
Andrew Jackson: bust from 1859 in Shelby County Courthouse.
B.B. King: statue of the blues legend at Tennessee Welcome Center.
Tom Lee: an obelisk and a more recent sculpture at Tom Lee Park depict Lee saving a man from drowning.
Martys Park sculpture: honors victims of Memphis’s Yellow Fever tragedy, overlooking Mississippi River.
Capt. J. Harvey Mathes: former editor said to have lost a leg in the Civil War.
Cary Middlecoff: sculpture at Tournament Players Club at Southwind honors Memphis golf champion.
Mountaintop: sculpture honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., on Main Street near City Hall.
Movement To Overcome: sculpture inside National Civil Rights Museum with depictions of those involved in
Civil Rights struggle.
“Memphis Belle” Margaret Polk: famous model for B-17 bomber shown looking skyward in Veterans Plaza at
Overton Park. One of just a few native Memphians honored with a statue. Elvis Presley — two statues
Downtown, one on west end of Beale Street and another at Tennessee Welcome Center.
Carol and Jim Prentiss: Memphis Zoo benefactors honored with statues near the entrance.
Rameses: towering statue of Egyptian king now at the University of Memphis.
Truth Seekers: Sculpture inside Benjamin L. Hooks Library formerly was in front of Cossitt Library
Downtown.
A giant statue of Elvis can be seen in the Tennessee
Welcome Center on Riverside Drive. (Mike
Maple/The Commercial Appeal)
Photo by Mike Maple
A bust of Andrew Jackson has been in the Shelby
County Courthouse since 1921. Located in the south
hallway of the Shelby County Courthouse, this
marble bust and pedestal was originally cast in 1835
in the White House; arguably the oldest known bust
of a sitting President in the United States today.
(Mike Maple/The Commercial Appeal)
Photo by Mike Maple
Photo by Mike Maple // The John Overton
monument in historic Elmwood Cemetery is just one
of hundreds of interesting and historical monuments
in the 80-acre cemetery. Overton was the grandson
and namesake, of one of the founders of Memphis.
(Mike Maple/The Commercial Appeal)
4 Photo by Mike Maple
In October 2006, a bronze sculpture by artist David
Alan Clark was erected in Tom Lee Park to honor
the civil hero. The sculpture depicts the rescue of a
survivor saved from drowning in the Mississippi
River. (Mike Maple/The Commercial Appeal)
Photo by Mike Maple
The W.C. Handy statue graces Beale Street. William
Christopher Handy (November 16, 1873 - March 28,
1958) was a blues composer and musician. He was
widely known as the Father of the Blues. (Mike
Maple/The Commercial Appeal)
Photo by Mike Maple
The Ten Commandments were installed in
Confederate Park in 1952 by the Jaycees. (Mike
Maple/The Commercial Appeal)
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