Small Towns, Big Learning
Can a State Park be racist?
A lot of planning goes into a four to five week RV trip, especially if you’re looking for interesting small towns.
I was reading reviews about Nathan Bedford Forest State Park just north of I40 in Tennessee near Nashville for our upcoming trip to Texas. The very first review, the most recent, gave the park all one stars out of five.
Reason?
They were appalled that a State Park was named after a person they thought to be racist.
“I can’t believe anyone would support such a racist park.”
Can a State Park be racist?
Racist is probably the most overused, misused word in popular culture today.
In all the places I have traveled, all the history I have read, I haven’t ever heard about or read about Nathan Bedford Forest.
According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, and other places I use to verify that Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia is accurate, Nathan Bedford Forest was a jack of all trades yet master of none.
He was a Confederate Army general during the American Civil War and had the nickname "The Wizard of the Saddle". He was the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and he later disbanded the formal organization in 1869. Forrest became quite wealthy as a horse trader, a real estate investor, a cotton plantation owner and was a well known slave trader.
He is believed to have sold thousands of slaves during his career.
He died in 1877 of diabetes.
Racist or “man of the times”(had an understanding of the contemporary trends and ideas in the time in which he lived)?
Born near Chapel Hill, Tennessee very poor, he became one of Americas first millionaires. By the time the American Civil War started in 1861, he had become one of the wealthiest men in the Southern United States, having amassed a fortune that he claimed was worth $1.5 million.
Forrest was also a Southern Democrat. So in my book, that potentially made him a racist.
In case your feathers got ruffled with my political remark, from Howard University (Howard University is a private, federally chartered historically black research university in Washington, D.C.):
It is important to remember that the Democrats and Republicans of the late 1800s were very different parties from their current iterations. Republicans in the time of the Civil War and directly after were literally the party of Lincoln and anathema to the South. As white, Southern Democrats took over legislatures in the former Confederate states, they began passing more restrictive voter registration and electoral laws, as well as passing legislation to segregate blacks and whites.
Sometimes we forget who the real racists were.
But it was this bit of writing at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, that made me wonder if this is why the State Park is named after the fellow, italics my edit:
In April 1864, in what has been called "one of the bleakest, saddest events of American military history", troops under Forrest's command at the Battle of Fort Pillow massacred hundreds of surrendered troops, composed of black soldiers and white Tennessean Southern Unionists fighting for the United States. Forrest was blamed for the slaughter in the U.S. press, and this news may have strengthened the United States's resolve to win the war. Forrest's level of responsibility for the massacre is still debated by historians.
If you dive further into the Battle of Fort Pillow, the South was generally pissed the freed slaves would have the audacity join the Union Army (that’s the North and “winners” of the Civil War) and slaughtered these “traitors”, Nathan Bedford Forest commanded the battle.
The park brochure claims “Nathan Bedford Forrest State Park was named after a Confederate cavalry leader, General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Although a controversial figure, Forrest is remembered by some as a noted military tactician of the Civil War”.
Needless to say, I reported the review, flagged it “unhelpful” and added “ignorant”.
Probably posted by a Social Justice Warrior (SJW) (a person who is overly enthusiastic about, and who promotes socially progressive views).
To give this SJW some credit, it spurred me to learn who this person was, but I bet if we headed to the park and toured the visitor center (most parks we’ve been to have them) we would have learned who Nathan Bedford Forest was.
It’s what many of our parks do, capture and preserve slices of our American history.
The names of them generally give a hint about what you might learn.
The point of preserving history is so we don’t repeat the bad stuff.
That’s the beauty of travel to small towns.
They generally have big history.
Beaufort, South Carolina
Beaufort is located on Port Royal Island, one of the largest Sea Islands along the southeast Atlantic coast of the United States. It is one of only a handful of U.S. towns that has had its entire downtown designated a historic district by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Filled with mansions built by the wealthy plantation owners before the Civil War, Beaufort was one of the only Southern towns chosen to be occupied by Union troops, rather than destroyed. More than 50 historic structures have been identified in Beaufort, including many lovely private homes that have been beautifully restored and are now available to view via professionally guided walking, bus, or horse-drawn carriage tours.
St. Helena Island’s Chapel of Ease
Beaufort is filled with history and historic sites that would be obvious to write about. But this was one of those “I didn’t know that moments”.
Humbly tucked on the side of the road that takes one to Fort Fremont after passing the Historic Penn Center (one of the nation’s first schools for formerly enslaved people, is one of the most significant African American institutions in existence today.) is St. Helena Island’s Chapel of Ease.
If you’re driving faster than the posted limit, you’d miss it.
During the Colonial period, chapels of ease were constructed by rice and cotton planters as houses of worship because their plantations were located so far from the churches. This one was once known as the White Church (pictured above at the top of this piece) served the island parishioners who were members of the Parish Church of St. Helena in downtown Beaufort.
If you’ve never been to downtown Beaufort, it’s comprised mostly of the “city homes” of the former plantation owners from the surrounding areas.
The excess in the architecture is prevalent.
St. Helena’s Chapel of Ease was built almost entirely of tabby between 1742 and 1747. Tabby is a type of early concrete that is made from mixing lime, sand, and oyster shells. The oyster shells were burned and mixed with sand and lime, then poured into forms to create walls and foundations.
My husband, the builder, old house restorer and master carpenter had never heard of tabby.
Neither had I.
Ingenious I thought.
During the Federal occupation (that’s when the Union Army, the North, began winning the Civil War) of St. Helena, the church was used frequently by several of the Northerners who had come to the island to educate and train the freedmen (freed slaves).
On November 4th, 1861, Sunday services were interrupted by a messenger who brought news of the impending invasion of nearby Beaufort by Union troops to a Captain William Oliver Perry Fripp.
Fripp’s ancestors had been responsible for the building of and the upkeep of the chapel. Edgar Fripp and his wife Eliza were interred in a mausoleum built for them in the site’s graveyard.
The mausoleum was built by Charleston stone-cutter W.T. White, and remains on the property today. Thomas B. Chaplin on April 13, 1852, “Said vault was a fine affair and did not have to wait very long for it’s occupants, Edgar & wife. The Yankees broke it open during the war hoping for treasure. It is now somewhat out of order.”
Thomas B. Chaplin was among the early planters of Sea Island cotton a strain of cotton unique to the Lowcountry in South Carolina, near the Atlantic coast.
Sea Island cotton boasted extra-long fibers that made the variety particularly desirable. This strain of cotton served as an important part of the Beaufort economy. Beaufort became the wealthiest and most cultured town of its size in America because of the Sea Island Cotton crop.
The Fripp mausoleum they say is haunted. The door of Fripp’s vault was ruined by the Union soldiers, and it was decided to brick up the entrance.
According to legend, workmen sealed the vault only to return the following day to find the bricks removed and neatly stacked beside the mausoleum.
Convinced that the supernatural was the cause, the workers left and the job remained unfinished.
Today the vault is empty, the door is still half-sealed by bricks, left just as it was the day that the workers left the job undone.
The chapel ruins were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.
Did you know any of this history?
In case you were wondering, we stayed at Hunting Island State Park in February, 2024. As far as I can find, it’s not racist.
It is however, 5000 acres of lowcountry South Carolina that includes beach, marsh, maritime forest, a saltwater lagoon and a historic lighthouse (it was closed when we were there).
All Photos Credit: Collette Greystone, except where noted.
very very interesting and thank you for sharing this, and the lovely photos!
Lots of history here that I was unaware of. You've made me want to hit the road. Thanks.