Tag: Nathan Bedford Forrest

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Group Wants Name Change for Nathan Bedford Forrest State Park

Hoonrable Mentions/Facebook

A movement is underway to change the name of West Tennessee’s Nathan Bedford Forrest State Park. 

A website, called Honorable Mentions, has been up since at least 2019 asking, simply, to rename the park to “stop honoring a KKK leader.” The site has 564 named supporters of the renaming, 21 opposed to it, and its Twitter has nearly 1,600 followers.   

“The name of this state park bothers and matters to some, but not all people,” reads the site. “We believe that a new name (e.g. Pilot Knob State Park) would attract more and offend fewer visitors.” 

People can register their names and opinions on the site. So far, 65 public office-holders have registered their names. From Memphis, the list includes state Sen. Raumesh Akbari (D-Memphis), state Rep. London Lamar (D-Memphis), Rep. Larry Miller (D-Memphis), the late Rep. Barbara Cooper (D-Memphis), and Shelby County Commissioner Tami Sawyer. Former state Sen. Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown) is listed as “open-minded” on the topic on the site. 

(Photo: Honorable Mentions)

So far, 21 have registered as opposing the name change. This includes five elected officials: state Rep. Dale Carr (R-Sevierville), Rep. Clay Doggett (R-Pulaski), Rep. Rick Eldridge (R-Morristown), Rep. Kelly Keisling (R-Byrdstown), and Rep. Terri Lynn Weaver (R-Lancaster). 

“We need our history,” Carr wrote on the site. 

“We need to learn not to repeat history,” said Doggett.  

“We need to learn not to repeat history.”

Rep. Clay Doggett (R-Pulaski)

Honorable Mentions answers this argument on the site’s Q&A section. 

“Would the people of Oklahoma City welcome a statue of Timothy McVeigh to remind themselves to stay vigilant?” reads the site. “Would U.S. troops be inspired if they walked past a statue of Jane Fonda each day?

“Would gymnasts appreciate a reminder to stay safe by including statues of the USAG doctor who abused >500 girls and women in their gyms?”

(Photo: Honorable Mentions)

While the group’s proposal seeks to change the name, it also would leave the large marker of Forrest on horseback at the park’s entrance. They would also add information about Forrest to a new marker on the site detailing his involvement at the Battle Of Johnsonville, fought near the park in 1864. The group would also add more information about Forrest on the state park’s website. 

Honorable Mentions

“This effort does not strive to erase history. In fact, as you can see in our proposal, we’re suggesting that we teach more of the history to park visitors,” reads the site. “This effort strives to create a better future, a future that includes welcoming and inclusive public places, and a future that strives to eliminate intimidating symbols and reminders of a time when we were didn’t value all people equally.”

As said above, the group has put forth Pilot Knob State Park as a replacement. (Pilot Knob is a large hill close to the site, one of the highest points in West Tennessee.) However, others have left possible new names including Fort Awesome, ​Dolly Parton State Park, Cybill Shepard State Park, ​Little Eva State Park (named for the nearby town), and more. 

The site also gives visitors quick contact information for the state park, the state’s park division, and elected officials.  

The idea to rename the park is not new. Tennessee Democrats began talking about it as early as 2015, according to this story in the Jackson Sun.

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News News Blog

Forrest Statue To Leave State Capitol Building

Credit: Nathan Bedford Forrest Boyhood Home/Facebook

The State Building Commission approved the immediate removal of the bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest from the Tennessee State Capitol Thursday morning. 

Two “no” votes on the statue’s removal came from the two top leaders of the Tennessee General Assembly. Tennessee Lt. Governor and Senate Speaker Randy McNally (R- Oak Ridge) and House Speaker Rep. Cameron Sexton (R-Crossville) voted against moving the statues. The remaining votes for the bust’s removal came from Governor Bill Lee and members of his administration.   

The removal of the bust and two others from the building was expected to happen after Thursday’s meeting. 

The vote was met with a smattering of applause. 

This story will be updated.  

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News News Blog

Senate Dems Urge Forrest Bust Removal

Credit: state of Tennessee

Tennessee state Senate Democrats are urging officials to “finish the job” to remove the bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest from the Tennessee State Capitol. 

Friday marks the first day the statue can legally be removed, following a 120-day waiting period from the Tennessee Historical Commission vote to remove the bust in March. Friday also marks the one-year anniversary of the vote by the Tennessee Capitol Commission to recommend its removal.  

“Our state capitol should be a place that celebrates the values and causes that unite us as Tennesseans,” said Sen. Raumesh Akbari (D-Memphis). “It was never a place for Nathan Bedford Forrest and now the day has come for us to finally remove his bust from these hallowed halls — and it should be done without delay.”

Sen. Brenda Gilmore (D-Nashville), who has called for removing the bust for decades in the legislature, said state law has been followed and it’s time for the bust to go.

“I have dedicated years of my life to racial justice and one fact I have learned time and time again: To overcome inequality, we must confront our history,” Sen. Gilmore said. “No figure in the modern history of Tennessee better encapsulates this lesson than the bust of KKK grand wizard Nathan Bedford Forrest.

“If we cannot remove a memorial to an enslaver from our state capitol, how can we begin to make progress on equitable school funding, fair policing, and adequate healthcare for all people?” she said. “Removing this bust today does not usher in racial equality, but it shows progress can be made. And the work of justice will continue.”

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Farewell, Forrest

Farewell, Forrest. (Photo: Jesse Davis)

For some time, I’ve been the de facto book reviewer for the Memphis Flyer, as well as Memphis magazine and Memphis Parent. It’s a gig I’ve cherished and enjoyed, and I fully expect my byline will still appear alongside the occasional book review, if with a somewhat diminished frequency. The downside of being the company book reviewer, though, is I didn’t always feel free to explore every book that caught my fancy. If it wasn’t published recently, didn’t have a local angle, or was just too darn weird, I’d save it for some indeterminate future date. There were too many books to read for work, too many stories to sample and share with my fellow Memphians.

Well, those days are done, and recently I read the (terrifying, disturbing, excellent) new novel by Rivers Solomon purely on the recommendation of a bookseller at one of the local indie bookstores. (Thanks, Stuart!)

That novel, Sorrowland, follows Vern as she escapes from a religious compound and flees to the woods. The compound, Cainland, began as a refuge for Black Americans, a cooperative movement where they could look out for one another since so few others cared to take on that task. But at some point, the people of Cainland were set on a different path. Vern, plagued by hallucinations and strange aches, eventually learns that Cainland was infiltrated as part of a government-led COINTELPRO maneuver, one that transformed the haven into a house of horrors where its inhabitants were unknowingly experimented upon. Sorrowland is a work of fiction, but its pages are dotted with references to real, documented instances that prove its plot is plausible. Predictable, even.

Timing, as they say, is everything, and the timing for my dive into Sorrowland couldn’t have been more perfect if I had planned it. (I did not.) I began the book the same evening, literally hours after I drove to Health Sciences Park to take a photo, for a Flyer Politics Beat Blog piece, of the former resting place of Confederate general, slave trader, and Ku Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife. Those days are over, too. Last week, the Forrests were removed from our city and are now on their way to a site in Columbia, Tennessee.

I am not sorry to see those bones leave Memphis.

Yes, Forrest is a part of Tennessee history, and I believe students should learn about his part in it. His legacy is that of a man who robbed Black men and women of their dignity, freedom, and lives. It’s a legacy we should never forget or banish to the back corners of our minds, but anyone whose CV reads like the one listed above has no place in any public park. If one of your biggest accomplishments would now be classified as a crime against humanity, you don’t get a statue.

We get to choose who we put on a pedestal, and we should make those decisions together as a community. Choosing not to enshrine someone in a place of prominence isn’t erasure or cancellation or rewriting history. It’s just a matter of choosing who we celebrate, and I think that we can find better heroes.

Every Memphian should feel welcome in our public parks, and using a public space to honor someone with a history of oppression sends a message that more than 60 percent of our city’s population is not welcome. That message, intended or not, just does not sit well with me.

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Politics Politics Feature

‘Just a Park’

Millar, Turner, and Taylor at Health Sciences Park (Photo: Jackson Baker)

In the wake of a previous circumstance of tenseness and hostility at Health Sciences Park involving the disinterment of Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife Mary Ann Montgomery Forrest, a press conference at the park on Friday, June 11th, was at least partly designed to clear the air, and to a large extent it may have.

The three principal speakers at last Friday’s press conference were County Commissioner and NAACP leader Van Turner of Greenspace, the nonprofit which now controls the large tract formerly known as Forrest Park; Lee Millar, president of the Memphis branch of the Sons of Confederate Veterans; and Brent Taylor, a longtime public official and the local funeral director who satisfied the state requirement for a technical advisor regarding the disinterment of the Forrests, destined now for a new gravesite at a Middle Tennessee site honoring Confederate history.

As Turner expressed it, “Hopefully, all sides were satisfied” — meaning the Black Memphians for whom the removal of the graves and monument meant a “full circle” expungement of former injustice and disregard as well as those whites who equated Confederate General Forrest with glory and their heritage. “I think the Forrest family wanted their ancestor to lie in peace, and there was never going to be any peace here,” Turner said.

Millar attested to the friendly cooperation and a general meeting-of-the-minds between himself and Turner, and Taylor, who saw himself as situated “in the middle” between communities, agreed that “all sides are happy with where we are. Both communities believe that we did this right.”

Asked what the future disposition of the park might be, Turner said he’d received “many recommendations,” but “Right now, we just want this to be a park, not to have any more symbolism here for a little while. We’d like people to just enjoy the park”

• Ellen Hobbs Lyle, the Nashville chancellor who ruled in favor of expanding mail-in voting last year at the height of the pandemic and subsequently incurred the wrath of the state Republican establishment, said last week that she wouldn’t seek another eight-year term in 2022. The suit that she ruled on was pressed by the ACLU and by a group of Memphis petitioners, and Lyle’s ruling was stoutly resisted by the state’s election authorities, who managed to get its scope reduced somewhat in an appeal to the Tennessee Supreme Court. Subsequently, measures to punish Lyle were pushed by GOP legislators in the general assembly but were rejected.

• Governor Bill Lee announced last week that his administration would go ahead with a 37-mile wastewater pipeline connecting the still dormant Haywood County industrial megasite to the Mississippi River. Construction of the $52 million project could begin in the first quarter of 2022.

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News News Blog

Historical Commission Votes to Remove Forrest Bust from Capitol

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.

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Book Features Books

Connor Towne O’Neill’s Down Along With That Devil’s Bones

America is having a moment of cultural reckoning — with a violent, racist past that still influences the current day. Often, the images look not unlike scenes from a Memphis park in December 2017, when, after protests and vigils, a statue of Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard and Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest was removed. In some ways, Memphis led the nation that night, as similar scenes have played out in many cities in 2020. Connor Towne O’Neill’s Down Along With That Devil’s Bones: A Reckoning with Monuments, Memory, and the Legacy of White Supremacy (Algonquin Books) works to examine similar moments of social judgment. O’Neill will discuss his new book at a virtual Reader Meet Writer event hosted by Novel. bookstore Tuesday, September 29th, at 4 p.m. But first, the author spoke with me about truth-telling, the myth and reality of Nathan Bedford Forrest, and white supremacy.

Memphis Flyer: Did you have any idea the book would come out at a time when it would be so relevant?

Connor Towne O’Neill

Connor Towne O’Neill: No, I didn’t. Although, even though there have been a couple of these flash points throughout the course of reporting and writing this book — the Charleston nine murders that set off these protests, the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017, and now the summer of toppling monuments in 2020. There have been these flash points in which it feels like it’s a very timely or topical book. But one of the things I realized while working on it is this is perpetual. The underlying tensions, the unresolved central questions of this country make for the fact that we’ll always have flash points like this. So no, I didn’t plan on it, but I’m not shocked it’s in the news again.

In researching your book, did you find any helpful strategies to get reluctant people to address racism and white supremacy?

Yeah, that’s the question, right? My approach was to seek out characters and have it have real people and real stories at the heart of it. It also needs to be more than that. Addressing these questions is more than just looking into the hearts of people and trying to decide if they’re racist or not. If we’re really going to address these questions, then we need to address them through policy. We have a 10:1 racial wealth gap in this country. You address that through policy, and that necessitates more than just statues coming down. It’s a really good start, and the stories that come out of protesting those statues and trying to remove them are incredibly important because it does reveal this underlying history. But it’s just a start.

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We had a Nathan Bedford Forrest statue come down in Memphis in 2017. It’s definitely not enough, but I also feel that it has to be a positive that people aren’t walking by it and thinking it’s normal.

I might have come off too glib there. Because I do think it is important, and I agree with what you’re saying; we do need to find a way to get on the same page, to have a shared common history. I think what’s happening in Memphis are important steps in that process. You know, the Forrest statue coming down, and soon after Calvary Episcopal Church in Downtown Memphis putting up a marker that tells the truth about Forrest’s role in this city and Forrest’s role in the slave trade. So I think that project of truth-telling that’s happening with Forrest and is also happening in Memphis with the Lynching Sites Project, that project of truth-telling and squaring to the darkest elements of our history I think is really important because it gets us on that same page. Because those policy measures don’t happen until we can come to that common understanding of what our past is and its consequences on our present.

Since you brought up truth-telling, can you talk about the myth of Forrest?

The myth of Forrest is that he was this cunning, shrewd cavalry tactician who pulled himself up by his bootstraps. He’s both like an everyman and a superhero of the South. And yet he’s also a slave trader, an accused war criminal, the first Grand Wizard of the Klan, ran a convict-leasing program on President’s Island. And the people who revere him don’t talk about that stuff because the myth requires us to look at his life and the history of our country at the time through rose-tinted glasses that’s unwilling to acknowledge the theft and violence that propelled it.

This isn’t a question, but I don’t see how anyone can look past the slave trading and convict leasing. Statues aren’t just historical. You choose who you honor.

It can feel perplexing, but it’s how we’re encouraged to think about American history so often, even outside of the context of someone as infamous as Forrest. We just think of it as “one of those things.” The stories we tell ourselves of American progress and exceptionalism teach us that we are a great country and our founding on freedom and liberty distinguishes us in the world. And yeah we might have made some mistakes along the way, but we’re constantly evolving and it was just one of those things. The “it” being slavery. It wasn’t great, but we’ve worked past it. I think that unquestioning belief in the unimpeachable goodness of this country is what allows some of us to try to overlook some of the horrific parts of our history that Forrest is a part of.

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Was it difficult for you to confront myths of America you’ve internalized? Even with research and study, you’ve grown up with these narratives, too, haven’t you?

Oh yeah, absolutely. Especially given my family’s history with deep ties to New England, coming over on the Mayflower, and having this really gauzy vision of what the origins of this country were. And that’s something that gets reinforced everywhere, not just school curriculums, but in public commemorations, holidays, political rhetoric. We’re swimming in it. It was only through the process of writing this book — and being around the past couple years when there has been a referendum on our history and our sense of our history — it’s only through that that I’ve come to see that our undoing was built into the founding of this country. Starting a settler-slaver society and trying to found a democracy on it was always going to lead to inequity and violence. But of course, when you’re myth-making, when you’re trying to create a national identity, that kind of stuff is convenient to leave out.

Do you have anything else you want to add?

The process of writing this book has been a process of squaring up to the darker aspects of American history and then being forced to connect that history and see its bearing and its consequences on our present. And I think that’s a process that a lot of people are coming to right now, and I hope that that resonates with readers.

Connor Towne O’Neill will discuss Down Along With That Devil’s Bones in a virtual event hosted by Novel. bookstore, Tuesday, September 29th, at 4 p.m.

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News The Fly-By

Week That Was: COVID-19 (Of Course), Google, and Nathan Bedford Forrest (Of Course)

CREDIT: Memphis Restaurant Association

Memphis Restaurant Association

COVID-19: Cases, Bars, and RiverArtsFest
 Shelby County added 1,116 new cases of COVID-19 from Monday morning to Friday morning last week, for an average of about 280 cases each day.

Bars were ordered to close last week and restaurants were ordered to close at 10 p.m. on restrictions issued from public health officials to curb the rising cases of COVID-19 in Shelby County.

Memphis Restaurant Association

Shelby County Health Department director Dr. Alisa Haushalter said the decision came as bars and restaurants are known to have higher levels of virus transmission because wearing a mask is difficult when drinking at a bar. Ernie Mellor, president of the Memphis Restaurant Association (MRA), said the order will have a “huge impact” on the restaurant industry.

The directive also asked restaurants to collect names and phone numbers of its patrons, but Mellor said this “will be challenging for our members.” Haushalter said the information would help contact people if they’ve been exposed to the virus in a restaurant setting.

The 2020 RiverArtsFest, which was scheduled for October 24-25 in Downtown Memphis, has been canceled due to COVID-19 restrictions. The board already is planning the 15th Anniversary RiverArtsFest, scheduled for October 23-24, 2021.

Google Goes to Southaven


Google announced last week it would build a new 60,000-square-foot call center in Southaven, Mississippi. The facility will provide human customer and operations support for Google customers and users around the world. The customer service will include answering calls, troubleshooting, and helping set up ad campaigns.

Removing the Forrest Bust
The decision to remove the bust of slave trader, Ku Klux Klan member, and disgraced Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest from the Tennessee State Capitol building is now in the hands of the Tennessee Historical Commission.

The Capitol Commission voted 9-2 last week to move the bust and two others from alcoves in the halls between the House and Senate chambers. The earliest the Historical Commission can take up the issue is 60 days after the Capitol Commission submits a formal request for a waiver.

Harris on National COVID Task Force
Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris was chosen last week for a national task force focused on rebuilding the economy after COVID-19. Harris was one of only five elected officials chosen for the Renewing America Task Force.

Residency Requirements
The Memphis City Council advanced a move that could require public safety officers here to live close to the city. Ahead of that vote, a coalition of Black clergy members gathered virtually to debate the issue. Many of those agreed that the city does not need more police officers and that the solution to the city’s crime problem is better worked toward by decreasing poverty.

WYXR Goes Live Soon
 WYXR, a new non-commercial radio station will hit the air (and digital devices) here this fall in a partnership between Crosstown Concourse, The Daily Memphian, and the University of Memphis. The station’s radio home is at 91.7 FM and its call letters stand for “Your Crosstown Radio.” That’s where the station’s staff will produce and air its daily broadcasts. The station partners came together to reimagine the U of M’s WUMR station back in November.

For fuller versions of these stories and even more local news, visit The News Blog at memphisflyer.com.

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News News Blog

All-White State Committee Votes to Keep Forrest Bust

CREDIT: Nathan Bedford Forrest Boyhood Home/Facebook

State Capitol building

An all-white House committee shot down two proposals from a black House member to remove the bust of slave trader Nathan Bedford Forrest from the Tennessee State Capitol.

Rep. Rick Staples (D-Knoxville) brought his ideas on removing the bust back to lawmakers after the Tennessee General Assembly broke earlier this year on COVID-19 concerns. Nathan Bedford Forrest Boyhood Home/Facebook

Staples’ original resolution sought to remove the bust of the KKK founder and replace with two other Tennesseans — Anne Davis, who worked to establish Great Smoky Mountain National Park, and William F. Yardley, the first African American to run for governor in Tennessee.

Staples broadened his original resolution with an amendment that would have allowed the bust to be of any Tennessean who worked for racial equality in the state.

The all-white House Naming, Designating, and Private Acts Committee debated the proposals for more than an hour. The debate touched on protests around the state focused on racial injustice, removing other busts and statues around the capitol building, and one lawmaker’s concern that Staples’ bill would exclude white lawmakers like her from having a bust in the capitol one day.

Staples said he was not trying to erase history, as many lawmakers have worried about over the hours and hours of debate on this topic. Instead, he said he was trying to celebrate an different figure that “touches us all in a positive way.”

Staples

“People are watching us right now,” Staples said. “Somebody said to me last week — a protestor at a peaceful rally. He said, ‘Sir, I respect you and I know what you’re saying. But some of the white folks you work with [meaning the other House members], I want them to know what I feel and where I’m at and what we’re trying to do and that we want change.”

Staples urged the committee members to be brave. He said those who lead on issues will sometimes “catch hell” but, as a lawmaker, “nobody can touch you,” and voting for his resolution would put them “on the right side of history.”

Debate on Staple’s proposals came after the committee approved Speaker Pro Tem Bill Dunn’s (R-Knoxville) idea to designate the area where the Forrest bust now resides for only Tennessee lawmakers. Forrest was never an elected official. His idea will go before the State Capitol Commission during their next meeting.

“[Racial injustice] is a burning issue,” Dunn said. “Yes, it’s a focus today but with the news cycle, who knows where it’ll be next year.”

With that, Dunn said Staples’ bill was too narrow to only include those who worked for racial equality in Tennessee. Staples said, “the issue is not just burning right now, it’s been burning for decades. It just boiled over right now.”

Crowds gathered in Health Sciences Park in Memphis around the statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest, prior to its removal.

Susan Lynne (R-Mt. Juliet) agreed with Dunn. She said Staples proposal would exclude “many other possible legislators or office holders that, maybe, didn’t meet those characteristics” for racial equality outlined in Staples resolution.

“I said, jokingly, to my seat mate here, ‘according to his resolution, we cold not have a bust of you or me,’” Lynne said. “Not that that would ever happen but we would be completely excluded.”

Rep. Bo Mitchell (D-Nashville) has spoken bluntly for the removal of the bust in the past. He did the same during Tuesday’s committee hearing.

“I have had people tell me that when they look at that bust, it hurst them and it bothers them,” Mitchell began. “They say, if he was alive…he would want to kill them or want to sell them.

“If you’re so afraid of what might happen in the next election…and you do what you know to be reprehensibly wrong, you’re in the wrong business.

“(In the committee) we talk about the Bible. Then, open it up and read it sometime. Know right from wrong.

“How long do we need to have discussion on this bust that you all know needs to come down, before you’ll have enough political cover to hide your decision?”

Minutes before Nathan Bedford Forrest’s statue was removed from Health Sciences Park

Off-floor cross-talk among members caused committee chairman John Mark Windle (D-Livingston) to threaten to take a recess “if we can’t continue in a civil manner” and wanted members to “not direct negative comment to other members.”

One of those members, apparently, was Andy Holt (R-Dresden), who said he was not searching for political cover on the issue. 

“Nathan Bedford Forrest did awful, terrible things; we can all agree to that,” he said. There were a lot of things in his life he shouldn’t have done. But, selectively, that is the only portion of his life that are known in the mainstream, not about the changes in his life at the end.”

He said he was not making excuses for Forrest. But he said a body is already in place to decide whether or not he deserve a prominent place in the capitol building.

Holt continued to say members of the body have not addressed atrocities committed by Tennessee native and American Preisdent Andrew Jackson. Identical statues of Jackson stand on the capitol grounds in Nashville, the White House grounds, in Jackson Square in New Orleans, and Jacksonville, Florida. 

Holt

Rep. Jason Hodges (D-Clarksville) said monuments shoudl be given to those “we celebrate and we’re not ashamed of.” He told Holt he’d be happy to vote for his bill to remove Jackson, too.

“I actually don’t want to remove him, either,” Holt said. “But what I see is a focus on one individual while one nearly maintains his historical innocence.”

Holt said Jackson committed atrocities on entire cultures and ethnicities that had not even been discussed before he brought them before the committee. He called for “intellectual honest” in speaking on Forrest and Jackson.

In the end, Staples’ broader proposal to honor someone who pushed racial equality in the state failed on a vote of 11 to 5. His original, more-narrow proposal, failed with the same vote tally.

Before the vote, he said while he was probably leaving without a win, he felt like “I’ve done my duty based on the outcry of Tennesseans.”

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News News Blog

House Committee Delays Vote on Forrest Bust to End of Session

CREDIT: Nathan Bedford Forrest Boyhood Home/Facebook

Nathan Bedford Forrest Boyhood Home/Facebook

A resolution to remove a bust of slave trader Nathan Bedford Forrest won’t be heard by a state House committee until sometime closer to the end of the year’s legislative session.

Members of the House Naming, Designating, and Private Acts committee approved a motion from Rep. Andy Holt (R-Dresden) to suspend any further votes on the move until the last meeting of that committee later this year.

Rep. Rick Staples (D-Knoxville) brought a resolution to the committee last week. It would remove the bust, “replacing it with tribute to a more deserving Tennessean.” After hearing from the state commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and a historian last week, the committee decided to hold the vote for one week.

A process for the bust’s removal is set in motion. When the Tennessee Capitol Commission meets on February 20th, they could vote to ask for a waiver to remove the bust from the Tennessee Historical Society. The resolution would not change anything about the process, but Staples told committee members Tuesday it was important.

“I strongly believe that is the Capitol Commission does not have a resolution urging them to make a move or a direction, they will not do it when they meet,” Staples said. “They will not do it and pass on it. Then, we’ll have to do this again.”

Minutes before Nathan Bedford Forrest’s statue was removed from Health Sciences Park

Holt said a resolution was not the only way for committee members to tell Capitol Commission members they want the bust removed. He said they should “approach those members with the Capitol Commission personally, and express your disgust, anger, or concerns.” He said “the most logical thing to do” would be to delay a vote on the resolution to the last committee calendar of the year.

Rep. Bo Mitchell (D-Nashville) said he felt ‘no pressure of political correctness” over the vote. But it was one of “historical correctness.” He called testimony from witnesses last week “a recreation of fictional history” about Forrest.

Crowds gathered in Health Sciences Park to support the removal of the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue.

“It’s been made very clear that the man was in command of a massacre,” Mitchell said of Forrest’s command of Confederate troops at nearby Fort Pillow, where some 277 mostly African-American Union troops were killed after they had surrendered.

Rep. Jerry Sexton (R-Bean Station) said that no one in the committee room could “know our history is 100 percent correct.” He said last week’s witnesses gave “very different accounts of this” and that some committee members were “trying to tie this man (Forrest) to something that may or may not be true.”

“We know this is about political correctness and I can’t be part of something like that,” Sexton said.

The committee voted 13-4 to move the bill’s consideration to the end of its legislative calendar.