Contentious Nathan Bedford Forrest statue that stood along Tennessee highway taken down
The contentious Nathan Bedford Forrest statue that stood along Interstate 65 in Nashville for more than two decades was taken down Tuesday.
The move comes just over a year after the owner of the statue died. Bill Dorris died in November 2020.
The statue of Forrest, located on private property alongside I-65 south of downtown Nashville, portrays the early Ku Klux Klan leader and former Confederate general riding a horse.
A security guard initially told reporters around 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday the statue would be hauled out through a gate. About 20 minutes later, reporters were told the statue would not be moved but stored in a nearby shed.
“This has been a national embarrassment,” Democratic state Sen. Heidi Campbell said at the scene of the removal. “I’m so excited. This is great news. It’s just so hurtful to people, not to mention it’s heinously ugly.”
Campbell had petitioned former Republican Gov. Bill Haslam's administration to take it down.
Nashville's Metro Council approved a resolution in July 2017 that asked the Tennessee Department of Transportation to plant vegetation to block the view of the privately owned statue.
The state quickly shot the request down.
Pink paint
Dorris' Forrest memorial has been shot at six times and vandalized other times, he told The Tennessean in 2017. The statue was vandalized and painted pink that same year.
Before the 2016 presidential election, someone placed a sign that read “Trump 2016, Make AMERIKKKA Great Again” on a fence on state right-of-way property near the statue. State officials removed the sign shortly afterward.
Dorris' will
Dorris’ will intended to leave certain real estate — like an ice house, artisanal well and the Confederate flag display where the statue sat — to the Sons of Confederate Veterans. He also laid out plans to leave a collection of Gravely brand tractors to a museum and $5 million for the care of his dog, LuLu, a 12-year-old border collie.
The rest of his estate was willed to the Battle of Nashville Trust. But he didn’t have enough cash on hand when he died. The trust could not immediately be reached for comment.
The executor of the will, Trenton Dean Watrous, successfully petitioned the court to bring the LuLu trust down to $30,000 to cover her care through the end of her life.
Watrous also could not immediately be reached.
Dorris’ estate still owns the property where the statue sits.
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The bust
In July, a bust of Forrest installed in the Tennessee Capitol was removed from the building, loaded onto a truck and driven away.
A crew of workers delivered the bust to the Tennessee State Museum, where it is on display with additional context about Forrest's life.
The removal of the Forrest bust followed years of protests and pressure by activists, but is something that became a reality last summer when Gov. Bill Lee declared it was time for the bust to be relocated.
Forrest's remains moved
In July, the Sons of Confederate Veterans reinterred Forrest's remains in Columbia.
Almost 2,500 SCV members and guests attended the burial.
The privately held reinternment ceremony — only attended by members of the SCV and their families — marked an end to a saga of legal proceedings sparked when a statue depicting the general and slave owner on horseback was removed from Health Science Park in Memphis 2017.
The statue was acquired by SCV in 2019.
Natalie Neysa Alund is based in Nashville at The Tennessean and covers breaking news across the South for the Paste BN Network. Reach her at nalund@tennessean.com and follow her on Twitter @nataliealund.