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Where Do Confederate Flags & Monuments Go Once They’re Removed?
Were they cast out or raised up?
Nathan Bedford Forrest
The bust of the first-ever Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard, Nathan Bedford Forrest, was removed from its place of honor inside the Tennessee State Capitol on July 23, 2021. Four days later, it popped up in a newly constructed exhibit at the Tennessee State Museum, where it arguably will be seen by more people.
The monument has been controversial since it was placed there in 1978, over a hundred years after the end of the Civil War. Major protests followed the installation of the bust from the moment it was placed, but the Sons of Confederate Veterans had more pull than the Black citizens of Tennessee. In 1979, the Black Tennesseans for Action were unsuccessful in getting a meeting about the bust with Governor Lamar Alexander. Later that month, the monument was damaged after being struck in the head. The Ku Klux Klan responded by burning two crosses in Nashville, one in front of the local NAACP headquarters. In October of 1980, Tex Moore, grand dragon of the Tennessee chapter of the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and others held a news conference in front of the bust.
In 2015, after Dylann Roof killed nine people at Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston…
