Statue meeting venue changed for bigger crowd
♦ A Rome committee will hear public input about the statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest at Myrtle Hill.
A monument featuring a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest is part of Veterans Plaza at the base of Myrtle Hill Cemetery where it has stood since 1952 when it was moved there from the middle of Broad Street.
Rome’s Community Development Committee has changed the venue for its Friday meeting to the city’s auditorium inside city hall, following increased interest in the proposed removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest from a city cemetery.
The special called meeting was initially to be held in the City Commission chambers, but City Manager Sammy Rich said the location was changed to the larger auditorium to accommodate more people and to practice social distancing among the public.
The meeting is scheduled to start at 10 a.m., with the public invited to attend or watch the meeting on a live stream on the city’s Facebook page, @Cityofromega.
Calls from Rome residents to remove the statue from the plaza at the base of Myrtle Hill Cemetery on the way into South Rome jump-started the push for the committee to meet to discuss the statue.
Rich said he expects the committee to use the meeting as an opportunity to get the community’s input on the statue.
Forrest is a controversial figure in the history of the United States of America whose exploits in the Civil War included being hailed as “the savior of Rome” because his troops drove off Union raiders in 1863.
He is accused of calling for the massacre of approximately 300 black Union soldiers at Fort Pillow in Tennessee in April 1864 and is credited as the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, although he later testified in front of Congress he had never been a member of the group.
A petition on the website Change.org authored by Abby Sklar, who was one of two people who spoke about the removal of the statue at Monday’s Rome City Commission meeting, had over 4,300 signatures in support of removing the statue as of Thursday evening.