Finally, the Nathan Bedford Forrest bust has been removed from the state Capitol. For those of you who have somehow, luckily, been living under a rock and know nothing about Nathan Bedford Forrest, he was a slave trader and Confederate general who oversaw the massacre of Tennesseans at Fort Pillow. He served as the first head of the Ku Klux Klan, later found God, and then shit himself to death.
Then, somehow, whether it was because of his fantastic hair, good looks and military acumen, or because he was a giant evil racist, he became the heartthrob crush of a disturbing number of white Tennesseans. And every time Black Tennesseans made any kinds of social gains, old Nathan Bedford Forrest was brought out of retirement to remind us all of the “true” and “natural” social order.
Removal comes as GOP leaders in the House and Senate put up a fight
In fact, we did not have a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest in the state Capitol until shortly after Avon Williams was elected to the state Senate in 1969. Williams — who was one of the attorneys who desegregated Nashville schools, and who defended the students in the sit-in movement, and who was a cousin of Thurgood Marshall, and who was a prominent member of the NAACP — represented North Nashville in the state Senate. Linda Wynn has a great brief biography of Williams that captures the highlights of his life.
Williams started pushing in the early 1970s for legislation that would require Tennessee’s public schools to teach Black history as an integral part of U.S. history. Also, in the early 1970s, the Sons of Confederate Veterans — with the help of member and state Sen. Douglas Henry — began to call for a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest to be placed in the state Capitol. If one were bone-ignorant of history, one could believe that this is just a monumental coincidence. But like I said, the continual recurrences of the coincidences of Black Tennesseans making political and social gains and white Tennesseans deciding now is the perfect time to honor Nathan Bedford Forrest leads me to believe those are not coincidences at all.
The Tennessean would have you believe that the bust has finally been removed not due to pressure from activists, but due to the skillful leadership of Gov. Bill Lee. Coincidentally — just like all coincidences in the afterlife of Nathan Bedford Forrest — Lee is the first governor elected after Sen. Henry’s death. Lee gets no credit for being right about disregarding this one dead person, considering the immense suffering he’s caused by disregarding our COVID-19 dead.
The funniest and most disappointing response comes from Lt. Gov. Randy McNally. In a Twitter thread, McNally said:
My position on the bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest has been clear and consistent over a number of years. I believe that context is needed, but not removal. No one is arguing that Forrest is not a problematic figure. He is. But there is more to his story.
His life eventually followed a redemptive arc which I hope is outlined in detail in our state museum. No figure honored on the capitol grounds or across the state could stand up to modern scrutiny.
Without historical context, we would have no Tennessee heroes, only villains. No Christian saints, only sinners. The left-wing activists who are pushing an anti-American, anti-history agenda here in Tennessee and across the nation will not stop with Nathan Bedford Forrest.
The woke mob means ultimately to uproot and discard not just Southern symbols, but American heroes and history as well. This is not the end. It is the beginning.
The left will move on to the next figure or monument and demand that we again kneel at the altar of political correctness. While the governor and the constitutional officers did not stand with me today, I hope they will next time. Because more fights are coming.
Y’all, Nathan Bedford Forrest was a Confederate general! You literally cannot get more anti-American than attempting to secede from the United States and then killing a bunch of U.S. soldiers while you are at war against your own country. In what world is it anti-American to point out that people who literally betrayed the country and tried to leave it were anti-American? I try to put myself in the shoes of someone who can believe that a man who was literally so anti-American that he betrayed his country and killed American soldiers was some great American worthy of veneration — but all I get are my metaphorical shoelaces tied in convoluted knots.
Really though, I want to address this part: “No figure honored on the capitol grounds or across the state could stand up to modern scrutiny.” Here is the important thing to understand and the thing that I wish Lt. Gov. McNally understood: Nathan Bedford Forrest could not stand up to scrutiny in his own day.
Every person who stood on his auction block knew him for the evil family-destroyer he was. Every U.S. soldier who faced him in battle knew him for the traitor he was. Every person who lived in terror from or died at the hands of the first iteration of the Ku Klux Klan knew him and his organization for the evil that it did. In his own time, his reputation never recovered from the massacre he led at Fort Pillow.
What if McNally spent even 10 minutes being as devoted to those people as he is to Forrest? What might that change, if he identified with the man who was stolen from his family by Forrest and sent south, never to be seen again? What if McNally imagined being the scared 18-year-old kid fighting to preserve the Union against Forrest’s hostilities? And fine, maybe McNally just can’t imagine himself as people in such different circumstances. But could McNally imagine being the politician who has to figure out what to do with the post-war Democrats running around refusing to acknowledge that the war is over and who are terrorizing Republican voters?
There was no point in Tennessee history when everyone thought Forrest was A-OK, and especially not during Forrest’s lifetime. The activists who forced the issue now have the same opinions of Forrest that many people have had since the time he started slave trading.
The problem with Forrest at this point isn’t the moldering sack of dust and bone and wood that constitutes Nathan Bedford Forrest, the man. The problem with Forrest — which has been repeatedly illustrated throughout the whole bust debate — is that when our white state legislators think about Nathan Bedford Forrest, they identify with him. They identify with that old slaver, KKK leader and traitor — and not with the people who suffered at his hands.
Imagine what it would mean for this state if that changed?
