NASHVILLE – In response to George Floyd‘s death, Tennessee Black Democratic legislators had hoped to make strides in the Republican-controlled General Assembly in areas ranging from police training to the removal of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s bust from the state Capitol.
But when the dust cleared last week, not much in the way of policy or law had changed on those and related fronts.
Lawmakers did unanimously approve a resolution declaring House and Senate members were “greatly appalled and grievously saddened at the repugnant and senseless killing” of Floyd, a Black man who died May 25 while a white Minneapolis police officer had him pinned on the ground with a knee to his neck.
And at Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee’s request, GOP lawmakers did away with a provision in a 1968 law that requires every governor to sign a July 13 proclamation declaring the date as “Nathan Bedford Forrest Day.”
But efforts failed to do away with the official commemorative day for Forrest, a former slave trader whose troops were involved in a massacre of Black Union troops at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, and who also was an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan.