There it is, in the Tennessee Code Annotated, right after the law proclaiming Tennessee Genealogy Month (it’s July, in case you were wondering) and right before the law proclaiming Women in STEM Month (it’s August): the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act.
Innocuous enough, you might think, perhaps assuming it’s a copyright or trademark law protecting all the great things we associate with Tennessee — Elvis and Dolly Parton, Moon Pies and Jack Daniel’s, Beale Street blues and the Grand Ole Opry. But TCA 4-1-412 is not about any of those things. It’s about the Civil War, and it’s about preventing anyone from removing statues associated with the Confederacy.
Here’s the gist of the law: “Except as otherwise provided in this section, no memorial regarding a historic conflict, historic entity, historic event, historic figure, or historic organization that is, or is located on, public property, may be removed, renamed, relocated, altered, rededicated, or otherwise disturbed or altered.” The exception? You can ask for a waiver from the Tennessee Historical Commission, via a long and convoluted process. Oh, and even if they approve it, you can be sued by “any person who can demonstrate a real interest in a memorial through aesthetic, architectural, cultural, economic, environmental, or historic injury.” Is it any wonder Tennessee municipalities aren’t exactly rushing to pull down statues under the cover of night as other Southern cities have done?
The act first passed the legislature in 2013, after the city of Memphis moved to rename Confederate Park, Jefferson Davis Park and Forrest Park with more neutral monikers. At the time, Rep. Steve McDaniel (a Republican from Parker’s Crossroads) said the legislation was to prevent cities renaming things “just because the wind is blowing a different direction.” But the legislation was written in part by the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
McDaniel has said since that the SCV didn’t have much to do with the bill, but there sure are a lot of SCV members on the historical commission. And while McDaniel’s knowledge of the Civil War surely dwarfs many in the legislature, he also once stated in an interview that if he could be any general in the conflict between the states, he would have been Nathan Bedford Forrest, because “he came from a common background and cared for people.” We’re not sure what he means, as Forrest was a slave trader and the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
An amendment to the bill in 2016 (in the wake of monuments removed in other states after the Charleston, S.C., church shooting) ensured that two-thirds of the commission must vote in favor of a waiver to remove any monument or rename any park. It’s an incredibly high bar to pass, no matter how much a municipality wants its vestiges of the Confederacy gone.
Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland has threatened a lawsuit if the commission, at its upcoming October meeting, fails to approve the city’s waiver to remove its massive statue of Forrest. But even if Memphis doesn’t sue over this, a lawsuit from someone is likely in the future. But until then, anyone who wants to legally remove a monument on public land has their hands tied.
