Tennessee officials could decide this week that the bust of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest no longer belongs in the state capitol.
If they do, the state museum is game to take possession.
Forrest was a native of Tennessee, whom some Southerners consider a hero. He also oversaw a battle that’s been called a massacre of black soldiers, was a slave trader before the war and, by many accounts, the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. So some have called his statue a symbol of racism and hatred that ought to be removed.
Lois Riggins-Ezell seems relieved not to be the one who makes that decision. But as executive director of the state museum, she has no problem with the idea that the sculpture might be given a new home in her institution. As she puts it, “we believe that museums house the history of the good and the bad, the best of what we are, and the ugliest of what we have been.”
Riggins-Ezell says it’s the museum’s job to put those items into context. And the bust would hardly be the only thing in the collection tied to controversy. Just last month, the museum bought an item she considers one of the most significant acquisitions of the last decade: a lengthy letter from President Martin Van Buren about plans to forcibly remove Cherokees in what would become known as the Trail of Tears.
The Tennessee State Museum is on track to move into a new building three years from now – if officials can raise $40 million in private donations.
That’s in addition to the $120 million the state has already appropriated for the project. Governor Bill Haslam plans to chair the fundraising campaign himself, and has set a goal of securing the first large gifts around the end of this year.
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