N.B. Forrest and the Setting Sun

It never had to be this hard. It should never have taken this long.

What Tennessee’s officialdom has allowed to happen, in their slow-motion handling of the bust of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, is about to leave some larger wreckage in the wake of such long indecision. It will neither end nor be forgotten anytime soon.

Far from “erasing history,” as Forrest’s defenders always claim, this episode has me thinking about a lot of history, including what history may record of this current moment.

Tennessee’s own public profile has taken quite a beating in this elongated process that should have been unnecessary. But the principal politicians have long feared to touch either that bust or the broader subject it raises about our country. Instead, they chose to hide behind each other.

The prevailing tone has been one of fear – fear of loosening the grip of tradition, fear of looking weak, fear of one’s most hidebound constituents, fear of reprisals from the bitter-enders who stoke the flickering flame of the Lost Cause. Even this week, on the day of the latest decision step, the legislative members of the commission could not free themselves of a sense of obligation to other adamant legislators.

For too long, the chosen strategy was one of simple, stubborn avoidance.

Remember, in the end it was not any official process that unravelled this tangled puzzle of what Forrest represents but the pressure of sustained citizen action. That finally is what forced this issue and brought it to a head. It was the volume of public protests that will have brought the thing down, not any boldness on the part our elected leaders. 

We’ve known for some time that our legislature and governor are much more conservative now than Tennessee’s general population. The officials are much more resistant to any change. We’ve seen this on other issues, like Medicaid expansion. Polling has consistently shown it has popular support by a wide margin, though the General Assembly says no even now - even as rural hospitals close and uninsured people worry about healthcare in a pandemic.

The Forrest bust has rested in its elevated, honored niche at the capitol for 42 years, since 1978 when it was first placed there in the final year of Gov. Ray Blanton’s administration. Only in the past couple of years has it become a broad emblem, or proxy, for all the Confederate statuary across the South. For Tennesseans, Forrest’s is the face of all the furor swirling over history and our race relations today.

This is still not over, by the way. The final removal must await one more process step with yet another state government panel, probably in the fall. And even then, it still won’t be over.

This tedious, over-processed route that Gov. Bill Lee chose to take with this will, in fact, only kick the can down the road. More precisely, down the Hill.

It’s to be installed somehow in our gleaming new Tennessee State Museum, which sits not in Siberia but monumentally on the grand Bicentennial Mall. And what judgments will be made about it there? Its presentation in the new spot will be a test of the museum’s curatorial leadership, first, but what might the people do about it after that?

Will further acts of protest occur in the new museum? More civil disobedience? What might state troopers be ordered to do in response there?

The big-shots in their offices and chambers at the top of the hill live smugly in their culture of avoidance, but history dies hard. At the end of the day, they have solved nothing.

This is not about one bust. This story will not go away, I think. It will continue to unspool out into our future, so long as we resist our reckoning with the past.

Be not proud of this, anyone.

© Keel Hunt, 2020