Middle Tenn. State President Wants to Strip Confederate General’s Name From Building

Middle Tennessee State University’s president, Sidney A. McPhee, is recommending the renaming of Forrest Hall, which honors the Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, reports The Tennessean.

The move to rename the building, which houses the campus’s ROTC program, began last year, when Mr. McPhee convened a task force to examine the name following a church massacre in Charleston, S.C., in which nine black people were shot to death by a white supremacist. Critics of the name have cited Forrest’s early leadership of the Ku Klux Klan, while supporters have said the general distanced himself from the Klan before he died, in 1877.

“It is clear that there are many wide-ranging and contradicting views about the life and legacy of Confederate Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest,” Mr. McPhee said in a news release, quoted by the newspaper. “I do not feel it is my role to discern the appropriateness or relevance of his actions prior, during, or after the Civil War. It is appropriate, however, for me to assess whether the decision made in the middle of the 20th century to name the building for General Forrest remains in our best interest in the second decade of the 21st century.”

To take effect, the proposal to rename the building must now be approved by the Tennessee Board of Regents and a two-thirds majority of the Tennessee Historical Commission. Mr. McPhee did not propose a new name for the building, saying that decision is a different matter than agreeing the current name must be changed.