Commission hears arguments on Forrest bust
Supporters and detractors of the bust of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest on Thursday made their cases before the State Capitol Commission, the board tasked with deciding the monument’s fate.
The commission hearing was the latest development in the ongoing controversy regarding whether to remove the bust, which was placed in the common area outside Tennessee’s House and Senate chambers in 1978.
Forrest was a slave trader and widely understood to have been an early leader in the Ku Klux Klan. During the Civil War, he led Confederates in the battle of Fort Pillow in West Tennessee, in which hundreds of surrendered Union soldiers, most of whom were black, were killed.
“There are passionate, reasonable, good arguments on both sides,” said Rep. Sabi Kumar, R-springfield, who spoke at the meeting about a resolution he has filed to add context to the bust, as well as place a new bust of a civil rights leader at the Capitol.
Kumar said that while he hears feedback from constituents who want to keep the bust as is to preserve history, he also considers the feelings of African American colleagues like Rep. Johnny Shaw, D-bolivar, who he described as one of his best friends at the legislature.
“He looks at it and says, ‘Doc, this fellow enslaved my forefathers. It hurts me,’ ” Kumar said. “I respect Johnny Shaw, and I have to balance that with what I hear in my community.”
Kumar’s resolution, scheduled to be heard in a House committee on Tuesday, urges the Capitol Commission to add memorials to civil rights advocates near any Civil War monument on Capitol grounds.
“I hope that this effort will unite us,” he said, adding he wants Capitol visitors to have “a museum experience that tells the story from Civil War to civil rights.”
The commission also heard from two other legislators on Thursday, Rep. Harold Love, D-nashville, who has repeatedly spoken out against the bust and the hurt it causes for African Americans, as well as Sen. Joey Hensley, R-hohenwald, who supported keeping it where it is.
Love talked about his own ancestors who were slaves, and Hensley about his who fought for the Confederacy.
Three members of the public spoke in favor of removing the bust, including Kevin Riggs and Chris Williamson, a pair of pastors who at the commission’s last meeting presented the members with a petition signed by people in favor of removal.
Six people spoke in support of keeping the bust in place.
“Who are we afraid of offending by removing the bust of a KKK grand wizard?” Williamson asked the commission.
“Yes, some say he was converted at the end of his life. But I promise you he’s not in that hall because he made a conversion to Jesus Christ, because he’s not wearing baptism robes or a choir robe,” Williamson said. “He’s wearing the vestiges of the Confederate Army. That’s why he is placed there.”
Mark Jackson, who is against removing the bust and wants it to remain in the Capitol, argued that historical figures, including a slave trader like Forrest, should not be held to today’s “code of ethics.”
“We must realize that men today will someday be condemned by future generations,” Jackson said.
“Because most assuredly our values will not be the same values of the future.” He noted the meeting was being held in the Cordell Hull building, named after a Tennessean who was a longtime member of Congress and went on to become U.S. Secretary of State.
“How much longer until the push comes to remove his name from this building?” Jackson said, apparently not realizing that a Republican legislator had attempted to do so in recent months.
After everyone spoke, Finance and Administration Commissioner Stuart Mcwhorter, who also chairs the Capitol Commission, said the group would not be talking any vote on removing the bust until it replaces a vacancy caused by Tyreece Miller, deputy chief of the Jackson Police Department, recently being nominated U.S. Marshal for the Western District of Tennessee.
“We can’t and don’t want to proceed without having that position filled,” Mcwhorter said.
The majority of the commission in 2017 voted against moving the bust to the state museum, but membership has since changed.
Reach Natalie Allison at nallison@ tennessean.com. Follow her on Twitter at @natalie_allison.