Down Along With The Devil's Bones

 Conner Towne O'Neill wrote the non-fiction book Down Along With The Devil's Bones: A Reckoning With Monuments, Memory, And The Legacy Of White Supremacy. O'Neill, a man born in a northern state who went to school at the University of Alabama, was unaware of Nathan Bedford Forrest when he first moved to Alabama. In this book he recounts the biography of Forrest along with the attempts in four southern cities to remove the statues of Forrest. Forrest was a cotton farmer in Tennessee who made his fortune by selling slaves. Later he was a general in the Confederate Army. Later still he was elected to be the first Wizard in the Klu Klux Klan. According to the author, statues of Forrest were installed at times of  racial tension.  When a black man is elected mayor of a town, the townspeople respond to their discomfort by erecting a bronze statue of Forrest. The author talks about palliatives. Palliatives are medical care or medicine that don't change the progression of a disease but do provide pain relief. He says the statues of Forrest were installed to ease the discomfort of positive racial changes in society. The book details the struggles to remove statues of Forrest in four southern cities. Not all the campaigns to remove the statue were successful. Reading the book taught me more about the history of the inaccurate notion of white supremacy.