Curious Nashville: Why Is It So Hard To Alter Confederate Monuments in Tennessee?

They’ve prompted lengthy debates in statehouses, changes to laws and intense protests — in one case leading to the murder of a demonstrator in Charlottesville, Va.

This tension over historical monuments also has persisted in Tennessee, and it motivated a Curious Nashville listener to ask about the role of the Tennessee Historical Commission, which decides whether monuments can be altered.

The question came in after Middle Tennessee State University, in Murfreesboro, tried unsuccssfully to rename a building named after Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

WPLN’s state politics reporter, Sergio Martínez-Beltrán, has witnessed several of the protests over a bronze bust of Forrest at the capitol, and covered other monument disputes. So in the latest in-depth episode, he visits Forrest Hall and takes up these questions: What happened at MTSU? Which laws govern monuments? And who has power over them?

Recommended Reading List:

• Meet the caretaker of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s boyhood home (Tennessean)
• MTSU’s petition waiver to Tennessee Historical Commission (PDF)
• MTSU’s Forrest Hall resources 
• Position statement from MTSU’s ROTC Alumni Club (PDF)
• Transcript of meeting where the Tennessee Historical Commission voted against name change (PDF)
• Current roster of the Tennessee Historical Commission

Podcast credits: Curious Nashville is a project of Nashville Public Radio. The executive producer is Tony Gonzalez, with editing by Emily Siner and Anita Bugg, audio mastering by Carl Pedersen, and web production by Mack Linebaugh. The theme music is by Poddington Bear.

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