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Project Would Replace Racist Statue at Capitol with David Crockett

Edward Carmack's statue stood on the capitol steps from 1927 until it was toppled by protestors in 2020. (Photo: Tennessee State Museum)

The statue of a historic West Tennessean is planned to rise at the Tennessee State Capitol where the statue of another historic but controversial West Tennessean recently fell. 

State lawmakers agreed to erect a statue of David Crockett on the capitol grounds in 2021. Public efforts to do this go back as early as 2012. The idea caught on but was tabled by the legislature in the 2020 session.   

Since the approval of the legislation in 2021, the process has moved along slowly and quietly. The State Building Commission approved the project during its meeting earlier this month. Even that vote was wrapped in a procedure that needed no debate, only the approval of the commission’s staff, which it had. That vote, however, only allowed for the commission of an artist to design, fabricate, and install the monument.

Legislation in 2012 created the David Crockett Commission. That board’s job was to find the ways and means necessary to create a statue of Crockett on the capitol grounds. Commission members were not to be paid nor reimbursed for travel. 

The group was also supposed to find private backers. The law reads, “No state funds shall [be] expended for such project.” That changed with the 2021 bill. Taxpayers will now foot the $1 million bill for the Crockett statue.

Another notable difference between the commission law and the new law is the location of the statue. Back in 2012, lawmakers just wanted it on the grounds of the capitol. But that changed in 2018, lawmakers had a more specific site for the statue: the pedestal above the Motlow Tunnel on Charlotte Avenue on the south steps of the Capitol Building. 

There was only one problem. When that legislation was introduced, another statue already sat at the location — the statue of racist, segregationist newspaper editor and politician Edward Carmack. The 2018 bill detailed the fact the Crockett statue was to be “in lieu of the Senator Edward Carmack statue” — that is, removing it and replacing it.

In his 1800s attire, curly, windswept hair and broad mustache, many who wandered by Carmack’s statue wondered aloud, “Why is there a statue of Mark Twain at the Tennessee capitol?” 

But Carmack could not have been more different from Twain. For example, Carmack, as editor of the Memphis Commercial newspaper at the time, incited a mob against anti-lynching activist, journalist, editor, and business woman Ida B. Wells. The mob destroyed her newspaper office. She was away and stayed away, all according to the Tennessee State Museum. 

Carmack was shot and killed by political rivals in Nashville, near where his statue was erected in 1927. It was installed, however, by a prohibition group (Carmack was also a staunch prohibitionist) that thought his big-profile death could further their cause. 

With this, the GOP-led legislature must have faced a quandary in 2020 and 2021. How could they remove a huge historical marker from the capitol as they were fighting to keep so many others (like a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest)? 

History, it seems, took care of that. Protestors tore down Carmack’s statue in 2020 during the turmoil following the police killing of George Floyd. 

Photo: Natalie Allison

State officials said at the time the statue had been removed to another location. State law said it had to be replaced. But it’s unclear if it ever was. 

But the suggestion that the statue had to be replaced by state law drew the (10-tweet) ire of pop star Taylor Swift. 

Photo: Taylor Swift via X

“FYI, [Carmack] was a white supremacist newspaper editor who published pro-lynching editorials and incited the arson of the office of Ida B. Wells (who actually deserves a hero’s statue for her pioneering work in journalism and civil rights),” Swift tweeted at the time. “Replacing his statue is a waste of state funds and a waste of an opportunity to do the right thing.”

One of the 2021 bill’s sponsor, Sen. Steve Southerland (R-Morristown), even told The Chattanooga Times Free Press at the time, he “didn’t think it would be possible to remove Carmack.”

The newspaper story said, Southerland “then smiled and then added: ‘Someone removed it for us, so they did us a favor.’”

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Editorial Opinion

Cometh the Change

Who, until weekend before last and Charlottesville, could have imagined a large contingent of neo-Nazis and their sympathizers marching en masse in public and claiming to speak on a subject of major national importance. That a gathering of progressive citizens rose up to resist them is only to be welcomed — even if those counter-demonstrators, as President Trump bent over backwards to contend, contained a militant element themselves.

The fact is that a term that was modish for a while in the ’60s and ’70s and then fell out of favor is likely due for a revival. “Participatory democracy” was how it went, and it denoted what was then a rising tide of direct action — demonstrations, marches, citizen interventions, and, in some cases, disruptions of both the planned and spontaneous kind — going on among masses of people who had not been elected to any sort of government.

There is an irony of sorts — or maybe an appropriateness — in the fact that, as our elected representatives in the Congress seem to have settled into a state of gridlock in which nothing (or at least nothing positive) can occur, citizens have taken to the streets to make things happen on their own.

The renewed demonstrations here locally at the site of the Nathan Bedford Forrest monument and grave and the new ones demanding the removal as well of the Jefferson Davis statue on the riverfront, are instances of an obvious sense of impatience and a developing shift in public behavior.

In Memphis, the issue is compounded by a state action taken expressly to counter the will of local government — namely, the Heritage Protection Act of 2016, which places all authority over monuments like those to Forrest and Davis in the hands of the state Historical Commission, which must approve changes in the status of the monuments by a two-thirds vote of its 20 members.

City government has already moved decisively to change the names of three downtown parks from prior appellations that paid homage to the confederacy, including the two parks with the offending statues. Mayor Jim Strickland and the City Council are on record as favoring the removal of those monuments. But the hands of city officials are tied — or seem to be — by the aforesaid state law. Those demanding immediate action point out, however, that the state law, which was rushed into being to prevent any change in the status of the Memphis monuments, lacks any penalty provisions.

Accused by some of the demonstrators as lacking in leadership, Strickland felt constrained to issue an angry rebuttal on his Facebook page, citing his prior actions on behalf of equality of all citizens and saying, “I want every Memphian to see the absurdity of someone accusing a mayor who is actually working on removing confederate statues as being an apologist for white supremacists.” The mayor cautioned against “an attempt to divide this city with the kind of racial politics that we should all reject.”

It is a warning well meant and well worth heeding. But there’s a corollary to it: that the times, they are once again a-changin’, and the order is, indeed, rapidly fading.

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Opinion The Last Word

When you’re a minority in a world of majorities.

CREDIT: Maya Smith

Even though I often find myself in spaces surrounded by people who don’t look like me nor share a cultural common ground with me, I try not to feel self-conscious about the color of my skin or the marked differences of our ancestors’ experiences.

I try not to hone in on those truths. I choose not to contemplate these things, not because I am ashamed of who I am or the amount of melanin in my skin, but because over time, realizing you’re a minority in a world of majorities can be overwhelming.

But there are times, when I can’t help but feel the effects of a system built on discrimination trickle down on me.

There are moments when, despite the efforts I make to respect all people or present myself as a productive, contributing member of society, I’m looked at as inferior based on a false notion birthed from either hate or a lack of understanding of individuals whose skin color or background differs from their own.

One of these moments came last week when I was in the midst of reporting on local activists’ fight to remove two confederate statues from the city. I found myself observing a relentless pursuit by a group of distressed people who look like me stand up for what they believe in.

Maya Smith

Health Sciences Park

On the other hand, I also found myself in an uncomfortable space of division and apathy.

I saw police officers standing in packs, laughing off protesters’ efforts, casually chatting among each other. And then there was the one disinterested cop who thought a protest would be a good time to pick his lunch from his teeth with a stick of floss.

At a protest early in the week, I heard one supercilious cop say to another, “I don’t get their point.” Cop #2 then spat, shrugged, and returned to cleaning his fingernails.

I couldn’t help but glare at the cop who made that statement. He was choosing to be ignorant and dismiss the obvious “point” of their actions: the removal of statues honoring two men who represent racism and hate.

When my eyes met his own entitled eyes, I realized this was the same cop who greeted me with the most condescending smirk I’ve ever received, followed by a disapproving head shake as I approached the protest earlier that evening.

As a journalist, I’m charged with reporting the news without bias, and that mostly comes with ease.

However, in that space of tension last week, not only did I become self-conscious about my brown skin, but I was flooded with emotion.

The prevailing emotion at the time, I believe, was fear. I was afraid of not only what could have transpired at that protest, but afraid of the larger divisive state of the city and the country.

I also felt sad. I was sad that those cops, who took an oath to protect and honor the city’s communities and those living in them, couldn’t even muster up enough empathy to understand where the protesters were coming from.

Coupled with that sadness was anger. I was angry at the people who showed up to “protect the statues” that day and all who have tried in the past. They fail to realize that those statues have a completely different connotation for people with brown skin. Or maybe they do realize it but simply don’t care. That possibly is even more disheartening because no one is free until everyone is free.

I think some might be missing the argument behind wanting the statues gone. No, a statue itself cannot repress a person, but what it represents can.

Nathan Bedford Forrest, who is memorialized in Health Sciences Park for all traveling down Union to see, was heavily involved with the inception of the Ku Klux Klan. The group was formed solely to violently terrorize blacks, northerners, and others whom they opposed.

The KKK has a history rife with violence, oppression, and cruelty — with hate (or perhaps ignorance) at the core of it all.

So, it’s truly, truly hard for me to understand why in 2017 it is okay for the former Grand Wizard to be honored in such a prominent location in a majority black city.

“It’s a part of history,” they say. Or as some like to put it, “you can’t erase history.”

They are so right. I don’t think anyone is stocking up on erasers and time machines. But I do think that the history lesson could be moved to a more appropriate classroom — perhaps a confederate museum.

People should not have to be reminded of a history that thrived on hate and oppression. Why can’t we move on?

So yes, I believe the statues of KKK Grand Wizard Nathan Bedford Forrest and president of the confederate states Jefferson Davis should be removed from this city. There’s no question about that.

Still, I won’t stand by the belief that removing figures made of stone and concrete will fix the problems in this city.

Even if the statues came down next week, justice and equality for all in this city would not be achieved overnight. The system would still be broken.

When activism falls short, I believe action must pick up the slack. Let’s do what we can with what we have, right now where we are. That means stepping into our city’s communities of color to lend a hand, meet its needs, tutor, mentor, and uplift. There is groundwork that can be done today to rewrite this city’s future — when will we begin?

Maya Smith is a staff writer for the Flyer.