DOWN ALONG with THAT DEVIL'S BONES: A RECKONING with MONUMENTS, MEMORY, and the LEGACY of WHITE SUPREMACY (audiobook) by Connor Towne O'Neill

 






Connor Towne O'Neill was attending the 50th anniversary recognition of the Selma to Montgomery March when he discovered something unexpected. The Selma to Montgomery march ended when Alabama State Troopers joined local deputies at the Edmund Pettus bridge and beat them until they retreated. The bridge is named for a Confederate General and a Grand Dragon of the Alabama KKK.

O'Neill was looking for a place to park and drove into a graveyard. In the graveyard, he discovered a group prepping a part of the graveyard for the re-installation of a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest (the original had been stolen) in the graveyard. It was on a piece of property owned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in the middle of the graveyard.

O'Neill sensed that this was the more powerful story, no matter how dramatic that moment on the bridge had been 50 years earlier. He decided to investigate the power that the memory of Nathan Bedford Forrest has over so many Confederate apologists. 

He begins with an interesting mini-biography of Forrest. He began with almost nothing and made himself quite wealthy trading slaves, including slaves straight from Africa (Constitutionally prohibited since 1808). At the beginning of the war, he joined as a private and is the only person on either side to go from private to general. He outfitted a squad of cavalry and became on of the most daring and active Confederate generals of the war. He led from the front and the omnipresent threat of his sudden appearance was a constant source of worry in the Western Theater of the Civil War.

After the war, Forrest was approached to lead a group designed to resist the new rights granted to the ex-slaves with a wave of terrorism - the Ku Klux Klan (also known as America's first terrorist organization). He formally led the group for a while and then may have become a leader in the background after it was formally disbanded (maybe he was still their leader, maybe he wasn't. Maybe they disbanded, maybe they didn't - it is surprisingly unclear).

O'Neill's search for the story of the hold that Forrest has on so many takes him from Selma to Memphis to Nashville to Montgomery and sees how people use Forrest as a symbol to oppose racial integration. 

Close up of the face of the Forrest statue
in Nashville. It was not the intent of the artist,
but Forrest looks plenty crazy
For me, the most interesting section was the discussion of the Forrest statue near I-65 in Nashville. I always keep an eye for it whenever I drive through Nashville (not often). It is so cartoonish that many people have joked that they want this statue to stay up even if all other Confederate statues come down. It is on private property, however, so it will stay there as long as its current owner wants to keep it.

Often, this was a difficult book. But, I think it is an important one, especially if you are interested in the Confederate monument controversies. 

Highly Recommended.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found at Amazon.com here: DOWN ALONG with THAT DEVIL'S BONES: A RECKONING with MONUMENTS, MEMORY, and the LEGACY of WHITE SUPREMACY by Connor Towne O'Neill.

Note: the Forrest statue along Interstate 65 in Nashville was removed by the new owners after the death of the original owner. Here is a news story describing the situation: Click here.

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