headed to a new home
Climaxing a years-long controversy, the Tennessee Historical Commission voted Tuesday, March 9th, to remove a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest from the state Capitol. Meeting virtually, the members of the commission resolved on the long-deliberated and fateful move by a 25 to 1 vote.
The Forrest bust, implanted in a Capitol alcove in 1978 at the behest of the late state Senator Doug Henry (D-Nashville), had been the subject of frequent demands for its removal on account of the Confederate cavalry leader’s background as a slave trader, alleged involvement with the massacre of Black Union troops at Fort Pillow, and his founding of a Ku Klux Klan corps after the Civil War.
Previous efforts to have the bust removed had been turned down by the THC, but momentum had clearly shifted against its retention when the Capitol Commission voted to remove it and Governor Bill Lee, among others, concurred.
The bust of Forrest, along with those of Admirals David Farragut and Albert Gleaves, will be moved from an alcove on the Capitol’s second floor to a section of the nearby State Museum established to deal with military figures of the past.
The fight to remove the Forrest bust coincided in recent years with the successful campaign to take down a bronze statue of the Confederate cavalry leader and Ku Klux Klan figure from its perch atop a pedestal in what is now Health Sciences Park in Downtown Memphis.
The Forrest statue was removed from the park in December 2017.
