A bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest is displayed in the Tennessee State Capitol Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)
NASHVILLE – This week could mark Confederate cavalry general Nathan Bedford Forrest’s final charge with a state panel scheduled to vote on whether to give final approval to removing the long-controversial 44-inch bust of the untutored military genius, former slave trader and early Ku Klux Klan leader from its perch of honor inside Tennessee’s Capitol.
The removal effort – it’s led by Republican Gov. Bill Lee – is on the agenda of the seven-member State Building Commission’s Thursday meeting and could result in a rare appearance at the meeting by the governor himself. Lee is the SBC’s chair, but like his predecessors rarely attends. At most meetings, members approve building construction projects, select architects and engineers, approve sales and purchases of state property and take similar actions.
If approved, the action would remove the Capitol’s second-floor bust of Forrest from its niche outside the Senate and House chambers, relocating it to the Tennessee State Museum to provide the controversial Forrest more appropriate historical context. The bust has been in the Capitol since 1978 and has generated protests and sometimes arrests ever since. That has accelerated in recent years and more so in the past year or so during the Black Lives Matter movement. But many Republican lawmakers, who gained full control of the General Assembly 11 years ago, have opposed the bust’s removal.
As part of an attempted 2020 compromise by the State Capitol Commission, struck by then-Comptroller Justin Wilson, the busts of two other Tennesseans, Union Admiral David Farragut and U.S. Admiral Albert Gleaves, who served in the Spanish-American War and World War I, would be relocated to the museum as well.
It would appear that Lee has the votes for removal with both the governor and and his finance commissioner, Butch Eley, having votes. So do Secretary of State Tre Hargett and Treasurer David Lillard, both Republicans who voted for removal in 2020 as members of the State Capitol Commission where then-Comptroller Justin Wilson forged the compromise adding Farragut and Gleaves’ busts to the Forrest-relocation plan.