October 5, 2017 - Following the August 12 events in Charlottesville, VA, where a white nationalist rally left 34 people injured and one person dead, 32-year-old paralegal Heather Heyer, urgent calls have been made for the removal of Confederate statues and monuments. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center's 'Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy' report, there are at least 1,503 Confederate symbols in public spaces, including monuments, statues, markers and plaques. Three of those monuments are in Shelby County, two of which include the Jefferson Davis and Nathan Bedford Forrest statues in city parks in downtown Memphis. Peggy Weddendorf, a 64-year-old retiree from Bartlett, strongly feels the monuments should remain standing, especially Nathan Bedford Forrest's statue, the former slave trader, Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan member. "What people don't know about Nathan Bedford Forrest is that he became a born-again Christian and he began to rethink his participation in the KKK and he renounced his involvement and tried to get them to disband. Which of course they chose not to," Weddendorf said. "But with Nathan Bedford Forrest, we don't celebrate what he did. I don't approve of (the) KKK, I don't approve of his involvement in the KKK, but what we celebrate is what he accomplished and he was a great warrior." (Yalonda M. James/The Commercial Appeal)