NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A legal challenge won’t have any effect on the governor’s position to move a Confederate general’s bust from the Tennessee capitol building to the state museum.
That’s the word from Bill Lee’s office one day after the Sons of Confederate Veterans’ national, state and local groups filed suit to keep the bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest right where it is between the capitol’s House and Senate chambers on the building’s second floor.
The lawsuit contends the required first step approved by the Tennessee Capitol Commission to remove the Forrest bust was improper.
“There was a hearing in February at the capitol commission and I spoke and I told them then, ‘you don’t have jurisdiction.’ ” said Doug Jones to WKRN-TV Monday.
He’s the attorney representing the Sons of Confederate Veterans groups who filed the lawsuit in Nashville’s Chancery Court.
“Jurisdiction” is a main theme of the lawsuit along with the words often heard from opponents of removing or relocating Confederate symbols from government property.
“We don’t need to erase our history and that’s what they are attempting to do here,” attorney Jones told WKRN-TV.
He says in the lawsuit the legislature approved the Confederate general’s bust in the capitol during the 1970s and should make any final decision to move it.
In July, Governor Lee urged the capitol commission to take the first step to re-locate the confederate general’s bust to the state museum.
His office told WKRN-TV those words still apply today.
“I believe that is the right path for our state based on this desire that I have to do the right thing for every single Tennessean,” said Lee before the commission which approved the Forrest bust re-location by a 9-2 vote.
Approval from the capitol commission is required as a first step in a law first passed by lawmakers in 2013 and then updated a few years later, but which law applies?
That’s now for a Nashville courtroom to decide for an issue stemming from the Civil War.
Nathan Bedford Forrest gained fame during the Civil War for his military tactics, but before the conflict, he was a slave trader.
