Tenn. leaders nix Confederate symbols

Support removal of Forrest bust

WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Phil Roe has deep-seated roots in the old South. Some of his family members fought in the Confederate army during the Civil War.

But asked on a radio show last week whether it’s time for South Carolina to remove the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of its statehouse, the congressman conceded, “It probably is.”

“The state of South Carolina has got to make that decision, not America,” the Johnson City Republican said. “And I think they’ll do the right thing.”

They may be sons and daughters of the South, but Tennesseans in Congress are coming to the same conclusion as many other Americans: The time has come to remove the Confederate flag — and perhaps even other Confederate symbols — from government property.

The racially motivated killing of nine African-Americans at a church Bible study in Charleston a couple of weeks ago has caused Americans to take a closer look at Confederate iconography and its place in modern America.

Many are concluding Confederate symbols have no place in society, especially on government property, since photos surfaced showing Dylann Roof, the 21-year-old charged in the Charleston church shooting, posing with the Confederate flag and espousing racial hatred of African-Americans, as well as Latinos and Jews.

In Tennessee, Gov. Bill Haslam

said the Confederate flag should be removed from Sons of Confederate Veterans specialty license plates. Going even further, Haslam said he favors removing the bust of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, a slave trader and founding member of the Ku Klux Klan, from the Tennessee State Capitol.

Both of the state’s U.S. senators — Republicans Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker — have come down on the side of removing the flag.

“The flag to fly and to put on license plates is the American flag because it is a symbol that this is one country and that we are all Americans,” Alexander said. “The state should carefully consider where and how to appropriately display other chapters in our history.”

Corker called questions about the placement of Confederate symbols “state issues.” But, he added, “If I were in the legislature, I certainly would vote to remove the bust and discontinue the specialty license plate.”

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, a Memphis Democrat, favors removing the Confederate flag from the South Carolina statehouse and Tennessee license plates and says it’s probably time to move the Forrest bust out of the Tennessee Capitol.

“I’m taught as a Jewish person at Passover to always be aware of people who are in bondage and to always be against it,” Cohen said. “And as a human being, let alone a Jewish person, I abhor the idea of people being slaves.”

Cohen said he understands that some people might consider the removal of Confederate imagery as an attempt at erasing history.

“But at the same time, in the Soviet Union, they took down most if not all of the symbols of Communism,” he said.

There are few, if any, images of Adolf Hitler in Germany, Cohen said, and one of the most iconic images of the second Iraq War was the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statute in Baghdad.

“Usually when there are people in history who the public doesn’t feel are the right representatives of the present state, they do remove those statuaries and they do remove those honors,” Cohen said.

Rather than focusing so much on the Confederate flag, the attention should be on celebrating the lives of those killed in South Carolina and comforting those in mourning, said U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, a Republican who represents Chattanooga and much of the surrounding area.

Yet, “This flag has become a divisive symbol that should not have a part in our state’s government,” he added.