Panel’s vote lets Forrest bust stay

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A bid by Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam to remove a bust of Confederate cavalry general, slave trader and early Ku Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest from the state Capitol building was rejected Friday.

The State Capitol Commission voted 7-5 against issuing a petition to move the bust from the Capitol to the new state museum being built nearby. It would have been the first step in a lengthy process laid out by Tennessee’s Heritage Protection Act that limits the removal or changing of historical memorials on public property.

Haslam spokesman Jennifer Donnals said the governor was “very disappointed” by Friday’s decision. Haslam renewed his call for its removal after last month’s deadly white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va.

Comptroller Justin Wilson spoke out against the unelected panel overruling the Legislature’s 1973 vote to place the bust in the Capitol.

“That resolution very clearly showed an intent from the General Assembly to have Gen. Forrest placed where he is now,” said Wilson, who was elected by the GOP-controlled Legislature.

But Commission member Howard Gentry, the criminal-court clerk in Nashville, voted to move the bust now instead of waiting for lawmakers to act.

“When I was a little boy and came into the state Capitol, there were colored bathrooms. And that bothered me — it bothers me today, and it never will leave me,” said Gentry, who is black.