Letter: Held hostage by history  In reading Wendi Thomas' Jan.
13 column "Forrest marker stopped by black man" I was reminded
of the old adage, "Those who fail to remember history are
condemned to repeat it." In reading the reader responses I was
prompted to coin my own version: Those who fail to move past
their history are condemned to continue suffering it.  Both the
column and the reader comments seem to advocate either branding
Nathan Bedford Forrest a war criminal or casting him as a war
hero who "fought the good fight." I typically find the truth is
somewhere between two such extreme viewpoints. Whether he was a
war criminal or a soldier whose exploits gave hope to a rebel
nation inexorably moving toward humiliating defeat is almost
beside the point. His true legacy is to remain a flash point for
the racial animosity that will likely remain a metastasizing
cancer for Memphis.  When he delivered his farewell address to
his troops, Forrest acknowledged the "feelings of animosity,
hatred and revenge" produ