Are Confederate Graves Being Dug Up By Liberal Protesters Following Charlottesville, Virginia Clashes?

Are Confederate graves being now dug up by protesters following the events in Charlottesville, Va., which saw intense reactions to the removal of a Confederate monument. Despite various reports, these protesters have not started unearthing the bodies of Confederate soldiers. Rather, protesters disrupted a patch of grass near the grave of Nathaniel Bedford Forrest in Memphis in July 2015.

That event does not currently establish that Confederate graves are being dug up in August 2017. Where did this misinformation originate? Several blogs published articles claiming that “leftist” protesters had carried on their demonstrations from Charlottesville and begun digging up the graves of Confederates. The most popular version of this appeared to originate from a site called Steadfast and Loyal.

An Aug. 17, 2017 version was published by Liberty Writers where they titled the piece as “Protestors Just Tried To Dig Up Confederate General’s Grave, Then Got Hit With ULTIMATE KARMA.” Chicks on the Right lamented that “apparently digging up dead bodies isn’t too far for these people, because it’s happening,” citing Daily Wire. On that date, Daily Wire’s John Nolte reported the following:

On [15 August 2017], with respect to tearing down Confederate monuments, President Trump bravely stood before the world and asked, “Where does it end?” The media responded by ridiculing the notion that such a thing could get out of hand. And now we have vigilante protesters starting to dig up the remains of Confederate Lt. General Nathan Bedford Forrest:

A group of protesters who want the body of an alleged Ku Klux Klan leader removed from their city have broken the soil over the grave.

The campaigners claim it has taken officials in Memphis, Tennessee, too long to exhume Nathan Bedford Forrest — who was a lieutenant general in the Confederate States Army. …

In his article, Nolte cited Daily Mail, but that article was clearly dated for readers as July 2015. Nolte would go on to correct the error but not before numerous other blogs picked the claim up.

Here are some examples of people sharing the false news coverage on social media.

The original report from which Daily Mail and all others borrowed their coverage bore a less-alarming title: “Group takes a shovel to Confederate General’s grave”:

This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.

A group was fed up with waiting, so they got a shovel and dug up a patch of grass next to Nathan Bedford Forrest’s grave and statue in a public park in the Medical District.

The group says they wanted the statue and remains removed for a long time, because he was a Confederate soldier, a KKK leader and a slave trader.

“If he’s gone, some of this racism and race-hate might be gone,” said Isaac Richmond with Commission on Religion and Racism. “We got a fresh shovel full, and we hope that everybody else will follow suit and dig him up.”

Snopes reported that the above stories are false because they inaccurately claim that protesters are “just” starting to dig up Confederate graves when the claim was made two years earlier. The Daily Mail coverage also re-used a local news story reporting that protesters “dug up a patch of grass” in Memphis. However, no one was digging up Confederate graves either in July 2015 or August 2017.

What did you think of the news coverage that protesters were digging up Confederate graves? Did you believe it or see people sharing it falsely on social media? Let us know in the comments section.

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