She said, “Tell me, are you a Christian, child?”

And I said, “Ma’am, I am tonight!”

Walking in Memphis . . . .

I was walking with my feet ten feetoff of Beale …

-“Walking in Memphis,” Marc Cohn IN THE SOUTH, when the neighbors are fightin’, most of us are taught to mind our own business. Go to the kitchen and make tomorrow night’s supper. Or do the laundry in the back. If there’s anything worse than having a loud family fight, it’s listening to it next door. Mama wouldn’t approve.

But can Arkansawyers really call Memphis next door? Memphis is family. Not distant cousins, either. We feel no need to ask for permission to walk down Beale Street. Any more than we’d ask for permission to get some Rendezvous barbecue sauce out of the fridge to pour over the buffalo wings. Lest we forget, the city of West Memphis is in Arkansas, geographically, legally and pretty near every other way. They say Texarkana is two cities too, but we’ve noticed that folks in Texarkana don’tseem to change much when they cross State Line Avenue. Even if they’re technically Texans, Lord help ‘em. Any more than folks change when they go to work in Memphis in the morning and get on home to West Memphis in the evening.

This family squabble inMemphis started out as a local thing. But then, wouldn’t you know it, the Klan was heard from. Yes, that Klan. And you know how the Klan’s being heard from is seldom if ever a good thing. Quite the contrary. About the only good news to come out of the Klan would be a gala announcement it was disbanding. Now that would be something to cheer, maybe even inspire a good ol’ rebel yell.

IT ALL started last month when the city council in Memphis decided to rename some parks in the city. There was one named Jefferson Davis Park. Another named Nathan Bedford Forrest Park. And still another named Confederate Park. They’ve now all been given newer, less ruffling names.

Naturally the new names are boring-Mississippi River Park and Health Sciences Park, for example. (Yawn.) You can tell a place is trying to lose its Southernness when it opts for the bland, the neutral, the nondescript, the yankeefied. Instead of the kind of Southern vernacular that still has a bite, a flavor, a taste of the ever-present past in these verdant, ever-remembering latitudes.

Some might not understand why Confederate Park needed renaming any more than the section of Confederate Boulevard in Little Rock should’ve been changed to the innocuous Springer as it intersects with Interstate 440. Why? Because the language police don’t much care for history-too full of memories, lessons, color, character and teaching moments in general. Better to settle for the flat and stale. Lest we learn something, especially about ourselves. Besides, the experience can be painful, however educational.

If history books are to be believed, Arkansas was at least formally a member of the Confederacy during the Late Unpleasantness of 1861-65. So why not claim/admit it? Because that would be too true to the past as it really was-instead of the insipid version of it that’s being sold these days. No wonder nobody with an ounce of imagination is fascinated by history these days, or at least the kind of narrative-free history that’s been turned into a tabulation of social statistics.

Anyway, 440 brings a lot of people through Little Rock, and our betters decided it would be best not to offend. As if those passing through might have thought Arkansas was somewhere up in the Midwest, maybe sandwiched between Nebraska and Iowa. After all, they spell it Ar-Kansas, don’t they?

But renaming the Memphis parks that were called Jefferson Davis and Nathan Bedford Forrest? Now there’s change you can believe in. And approve of.

One of those namesakes was thefirst and only, thank God, president of the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis refused to accept defeat when it was obvious, resisted piecing the Union back together even after The War, and might have continued that tragic struggle for years after Appomattox if he hadn’t been tracked down and captured while on the run somewhere in Georgia.

The other “honoree” was a Confederate general/bandit who helped form the Ku Klux Klan. And has become its patron saint, as if anything about the Klan could be saintly. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s idea of war was closer to that of Quantrill’s Raiders or Sherman’s bummers than to that of Robert E. Lee, whose Army of Northern Virginia may have been chivalry’s last stand before modernity launched modern warfare on the awful road to Malmedy and Katyn, the Holocaust and Hiroshima, God help us all.

Neither of these two heralds of Southern decadence, Messrs. Davis and Forrest, should be memorialized in the names of parks where innocent children play. Memphis did right to efface their names from official memory. But thenthe Klan chimed in. Uh-oh.

YOU’D be forgiven, Gentle Reader, if you thought this when you heard about the kluxers’ display in Memphis:

The Klan?

Is that bunch still around? Really? Some of us thoughtthe last Klansmen went out with Gibson Girl hairdos and the Wilson administration, whose namesake was scarcely an advocate for racial justice and amity himself. Racists can still be found under this rock or that in the current South and writing the usual letter to the editor, but the actual, real-life, surviving Klan? Is that still around? Even in malign spirit?

Wasn’t there something about a handful of white supremacists acting up in rural spots around Mountain Home a couple years back? Or was it those wideeyed types from Montana who’re still waiting for the feds, black helicopters and all, to come get their guns? But the Klan? We thought that outfit had been shamed out of existence.

Apparently not. Dispatches say between 60 and 75 specimens who said they were with the Klan marched in Memphis last Saturday to protest the changing of the parks’ names. As you might expect, they brought signs and a megaphone with them.

Reporters say the megaphone gave out early on, which you could call an early Easter blessing. Some of the protesters wore hoods. Which is good. It makes them easier to spot. You don’t want to get caught on a bus with a dozen of their kind without fair warning.

Some of their signs said “KKK.” (That must stand for something.) Others held signs with swastikas on them. How 1939. And they all chanted slogans and generally protested the names of Memphis’ parks joining the 21st Century. Or maybe the 20th. (We’d put up a fight to keep Confederate Park’s name if only the Klan hadn’t wanted to.) Anyway, it all made the National News.

Translation: The national press thought this Klan rally of a few dozen people would make the South look backward enough to be newsworthy. (Sigh.)

One of the lead kluxers-the Chief Wizard? Grand Gizzard?-told the press his folks were protesting the change of names because the city was trying to “erase white history.” Which would be impossible. As much as many of us would like to wipe away the Klan’s part in it.

What those of us looking back on history can do, however, is recognize when some of its figures shouldn’t be honored with the name of a park. At least that much we should have learned by now.

There are plenty of folks who served with distinction on the Confederate side of The War-and who deserve their names on a park. Maybe even on a school or street sign. But really, do honor to Jefferson Davis? Pay homage to Nathan Bedford Forrest? Please. The South was, and certainly is, better than that. A lot better.

Editorial, Pages 16 on 04/03/2013