“There’s no doubt in Tennessee State Sen. Heidi Campbell’s (D) mind that Senate Republicans are retaliating against a state historical commission for voting to remove a bust of the slave trader, Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest from the state capitol. The Tennessee Historical Commission voted 25-1 last week to remove the bust and place it in a museum. On Wednesday, eight days later, five Republicans on a Senate committee voted to advance a bill to dismiss the commission’s current members entirely, and replace them with a new, 12-member body. An amendment to the legislation would also require any commission decisions about removing monuments to be approved by a joint resolution of the general assembly.”

“‘It’s embarrassing, is what it is,’ Campbell told TPM Thursday, adding that she believed the bill to replace the commission had enough support to reach the governor’s desk. But the effort to sack the historical commission is just the latest in a years-long bureaucratic struggle over monuments to Confederate history in Tennessee. In fact, the current rules for removing monuments date back to 2013, when the state passed the Heritage Protection Act, barring the removal of monuments on public property without a two-thirds waiver vote from the commission. Later, during another monument removal impasse in 2017, the majority-Black city of Memphis successfully circumvented the law by selling two public parks that contained Confederate monuments to a nonprofit run by Shelby County commissioner and NAACP official Van Turner for $1,000. The nonprofit then removed the statues, one of Forrest and one of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. The legislature took note. The following year, it amended the Heritage Protection Act to prevent another such transfer in the future” – Talking Points Memo.