Donald Trump likes to tweet there are good people on both sides. That may be the case sometimes. Certainly not when Nazis marched at Charlottesville, Virginia last year; when the Ku Klux Klan terrorized Southern Blacks; and when Confederate troops under the command of General Nathan Bedford Forrest slaughtered African American soldiers in the service of the United States Army during the Civil War.
Fort Pillow State Historic Park in Henning, Tennessee overlooks the Mississippi River. It became a state park in 1971. A fort was built on this site in by the Confederacy during the Civil War because of its strategic location for controlling river traffic. However, it was abandoned as the United States Navy advanced upriver from New Orleans and was eventually taken over by United States armed forces. Many of the Union soldiers stationed to defend the fort were African American.
On April 12, 1864, Confederate troops under the command of General Nathan Bedford Forrest launched an assault against the Union forces defending Fort Pillow. Forrest, after twice using a “flag of truce” to maneuver his troops closer to the fort, overwhelmed its defenders.What followed was the massacre of hundreds of Black United States soldiers by their Confederate captors after they had already surrendered. The Black soldiers who were butchered in cold blood by the Confederate troops were regularly enlisted in the Union army, were in full uniform, and were defending the United States flag. Black women and children caught in the fort were also murdered.
Following the massacre, Congress passed a joint resolution demanding an official inquiry, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton initiated a military investigation, and Abraham Lincoln ordered General Benjamin Butler, who was negotiating prisoner exchanges with the Confederacy, to demand that captured Black soldiers be treated the same as White soldiers. Unfortunately, within a month, the incident was largely forgotten, except by the 200,000 Black Union soldiers who marched into battle defending the United States and their own freedom shouting “Remember Fort Pillow.”
While the state of Tennessee recently updated the Fort Pillow museum to include more information about the Black soldiers stationed there, coverage of the massacre by state guides remains troublesome. Instead of presenting the massacre as a historical fact documented by a Congressional investigation, it is offered as a subject of debate. Forrest is excused for overseeing the slaughter of unarmed people because he might not have received an “official” notice of surrender.
In response to the cleansing of history, Congressional Representative Bobby L. Rush (Dem-Chicago, Illinois) introduced HR 5209 in the House of Representatives demanding that Fort Pillow become a National Battlefield Park under the jurisdiction of the federal government. The bill specifically charges that “the State of Tennessee allows the wrongful modification of the historical record by claiming it was a battle without a massacre of hundreds of surrendering Union troops and innocent civilians.”
The Remember Fort Pillow Committee is organizing support for passage of HR 5209. They are meeting with members of the Tennessee Congressional delegation and are requesting people across the country call their Congressional Representatives and ask them to support HR 5209.
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