Church gets nearly $1M grant to honor people sold at former slave market

Interesting, for several reasons:

1. My first thought was a known slave market in Louisville, Georgia. Haven’t been through Louisville much, but have seen it passing by and knew what it was. Having never stopped, didn’t know if there was a marker there or not. A search a few minutes ago turned up that, in 2020, Louisville City Council votes to remove it. This was following the George Floyd riots and protests. IMHO, the entire structure should have been kept as a memorial to those sold there, with a marker to tell the significance of it.

2. N.B. Forrest. There’s a complex figure if there ever was one. Commanding officer over forces that overran Fort Pillow and massacred surrendering black US troops. Forrest tried to distance himself from that. As noted in the article, he was involved in the slave trade. He was also a reputed Grand Wizard of the KKK. The same man, to keep a promise he made to his own slaves, armed them after the was to the point that it made Federal authorities nervous. He also spoke at a meeting of a fraternal order of blacks in Memphis in 1875. None of this is any great secret, so I’m surprised the marker from the 1950s failed to mention his involvement in the slave trade.