NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A bid by Tennessee’s governor 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 moving 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.
Republican Gov. Bill Haslam called for the removal after last month’s deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. He had previously called for removing it after the 2015 slayings of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina.
Finance Commissioner Larry Martin sponsored the proposal to move the bust.
“The Civil War, and Tennessee’s role in it, is part of our history. It needs to be recognized and understood, but not celebrated,” he said. “The Tennessee state Capitol building should be a place that represents a united Tennessee rather than a divided one.”