Officials in several states are calling for the removal of public monuments that have become controversial symbols of the Confederacy, driven by the national outcry over the violence in Charlottesville, Va., that erupted on Saturday during a protest organized by white nationalists.
In Nashville on Monday, protesters at the state Capitol demanded the removal of a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest that sits between the Statehouse and Senate chambers, The Tennessean reported. Forrest, a Confederate general and KKK leader, was involved in an 1864 massacre of black soldiers.
Top Tennessee Democrats asked for its removal in 2015. But the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act, passed in 2016, has made the process more difficult.
Nashville is also home to another statue of Forrest that has been described as “terrifying,” with eyes that glow “like a flesh-eating zombie on bath salts,” as a Washington Post reporter once wrote. Despite efforts to remove it, the statue still stands.
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Anna Lopez Brosche, president of the Jacksonville City Council in Florida, said in a statement on Monday that she is asking the city to take an inventory of all Confederate symbols on public property, and to “develop an appropriate plan of action” to relocate them to places like museums and education institutions.
“It is important to never forget the history of our great city; and, these monuments, memorials, and markers represent a time in our history that caused pain to so many,” she said Monday.
In Maryland, a statue of the former Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney, which sits in front of the Statehouse, has drawn ire. Michael E. Busch the House speaker, told The Baltimore Sun on Monday that “it’s the appropriate time to remove it.” Taney is best known for ruling against Dred Scott in 1857, decreeing that blacks couldn’t claim United States citizenship, and therefore couldn’t sue in federal court.
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The mayor of Lexington, Jim Gray, said he would speed up a proposal to remove two Confederate monuments from the city’s former courthouse. Credit Chris Wilson for The New York Times
Mayor Jim Gray of Lexington, Ky., said in a statement on Saturday that plans to move two statues of Confederate figures from the grounds of the former courthouse there were in place before the violence in Charlottesville, in which a 32-year-old woman was killed and at least 34 others were injured. He said what happened there “accelerated the announcement I intended to make next week.”
“We have thoroughly examined this issue, and heard from many of our citizens,” he said.
The statues in question are of John Hunt Morgan, a Confederate general, and John C. Breckinridge, the 14th vice president of the United States who also served as the Confederate secretary of war.
The former courthouse, which has not been used for several years, is scheduled to reopen as a visitors center next year. The proposal under consideration would move the statues to a city park, Veterans Park, according to The Lexington Herald-Leader.
Mr. Gray said the next step was to ask the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council to support a petition to the Kentucky Military Heritage Commission, which he said was a required step in the process. “Details to come,” he said.
