“I’m a Southerner, Too”: Confederate Monuments and Black Southern Counterpublics in Memphis, Tennessee

ABSTRACT

Building on a growing body of literature about the historical and contemporary formation of Black Southern identity, this essay studies the rhetoric of a local activist group in Memphis, Tennessee which sought the removal of that city’s confederate monuments in 2017. I argue that the group, #TakeEmDown901, fashioned a Black Southern counterpublic through a significant and sophisticated intervention into pressing questions about the racial contours of Southern heritage. Drawing from the analysis of a broad range of texts produced during the controversy, I contend that attention to the rhetorical emergence of this counterpublic in practice can help to address a deficit that has hindered the study of Southern oratory for more than a century – its hegemonically White sense of Southern heritage.

KEYWORDS:

• Southern rhetoric
• Southern identity
• black counterpublics
• confederate monuments

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. While #TakeEmDown901 also worked to remove another statue – of Confederate President Jefferson Davis – at a separate park, their primary emphasis was on the statue of Forrest.

2. Along with Sawyer, the leadership team of the group included Earle J. Fisher, Keedran Franklin, Andre Johnson, Shahidah Jones, and Charles McKinney. I want to thank filmmaker Gary Moore for recording several key moments of Sawyer’s rhetoric that would be lost to us were it not for his efforts to document the movement. I dedicate the essay to Earnestine Lovelle Jenkins, with deep appreciation for so many things.