Nathan Bedford Forrest

Nathan Bedford Forrest died in his brother Jesse's house here, aged 56, on October 29, 1877. His Memphis years ran through the slave market on Adams Avenue, the Fort Pillow massacre of 1864, where historians estimate two-thirds of the Black soldiers were killed after resistance ended, and, from 1867, leadership of the Ku Klux Klan, which he ordered dissolved in 1869. Historians disagree over whether he ordered the killings at Fort Pillow. His last years went to farming President's Island with convict labor. The cavalry legend omits all of it.

What the plaque says

Nathan Bedford Forrest In a house here, home of Col. Jesse Forrest, his brother, the man who had risen from private to lieutenant general in the Confederate Army died Oct. 27, 1877. Because of his achievements as a cavalry commander, he was termed by a foreign military authority the greatest commander of light cavalry among English-speaking peoples.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sun Studio — steps away
  The small Union Avenue room where Sam Phillips recorded Rocket 88, Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Presley and the Million Dollar Quartet, now a National Historic Landmark.
• Beale Street — 0.8 mi
  The street that became the center of Black Memphis after the Civil War, home to Church's Park, W. C. Handy, Ida B. Wells and the blues, now a National Historic Landmark district.
• Elmwood Cemetery — 1.1 mi
  Memphis's oldest active cemetery, a rural garden cemetery of about 1,500 trees opened in 1852, with Black civic leaders, yellow fever victims and the city's whole history in its lots.
• 1866 Memphis Massacre Marker at Army Park — 1.1 mi
  A privately funded NAACP marker in a small downtown park, placed in 2016, that names the May 1866 attack on Black South Memphis as a massacre.

More markers nearby

• The First Railroad in West Tennessee The LaGrange & Memphis Railroad — steps away
• Nathan Bedford Forrest III, Airman — steps away
• Luke Edward Wright — 0.3 mi
• George W. Lee 1894-1976 — 0.3 mi