Tennessee Celebrates Slave Owner and KKK Grand Wizard

Oh Tennessee legislature, with all that’s going on this country right now, why are you insisting on allowing blatant hate to be protected?

Last week protesters descended on the Tennessee state Capitol after lawmakers voted to keep a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan leader on full display. Nathan Bedford Forrest was the first grand wizard of the KKK, amassed a fortune as a plantation owner and slave trader prior to serving in the Confederate Army during the Civil War.

That’s cause for a place of honor in the capitol?

People have been trying to remove the bronze bust of Forrest since it was first erected in 1978. Many protesters feel that by keeping symbols of racism and white supremacy on public display they are hurting this and future generations of black Americans, but GOP lawmakers say removing the bust isn’t the solution and that it could open the door to other controversial monuments being torn down.

And that’s a bad thing?

And the Tennessee GOP thinks that deserves a place of honor. Especially Republican … because, of course … Representative Jerry Sexton, who voted against the bust’s removal, and seemed to excuse Tennessee’s long history of racism:

“It was not against the law to own slaves back then. Who knows, maybe some of us will be slaves one of these days. Laws change. But what about the people that I represent, that it will offend them if we move this? They’ll be offended. They won’t like it. But it doesn’t seem to matter.”

Some of us might be slaves one day? What is Sexton suggesting that perhaps slavery wasn’t so bad. And if you represent a group of people who support and admire a racist slave-owning Confederate general, perhaps, after you educate yourself, you educate them. Yes, people owned slaves—white people owned black people—back in the day, and yes it was legal, and yes, it’s historical, but when you know better, you do better.

Sexton just doesn’t know better.

To celebrate Nathan Bedford Forrest is to support slavery and racism. It’s that simple.

Sidenote #1: in Germany it is illegal to fly the Nazi flag, so white supremacists and neo-Nazis fly the Confederate flag.

That speaks volumes about that.

Sidenote#2: Governor Bill Lee will no longer have to proclaim Nathan Bedford Forrest Day in Tennessee now that both chambers of the legislature have passed a bill releasing him from the requirement.

However, the day still exists, which means it’s still celebrated, but the governor doesn’t have to acknowledge it.