{"id":137660,"date":"2019-07-15T12:00:13","date_gmt":"2019-07-15T11:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=137660"},"modified":"2019-07-14T12:34:06","modified_gmt":"2019-07-14T11:34:06","slug":"in-most-of-america-its-saturday-in-tennessee-its-a-day-to-honor-the-kkks-first-grand-wizard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/07\/in-most-of-america-its-saturday-in-tennessee-its-a-day-to-honor-the-kkks-first-grand-wizard\/","title":{"rendered":"In Most of America, It\u2019s Saturday – in Tennessee, It\u2019s a Day to Honor the KKK\u2019s First Grand Wizard"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nathan Bedford Forrest was also a slave trader and perpetrator of the Fort Pillow Massacre of hundreds of black Union troops.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A bust of Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest (not of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character from the Quentin Tarantino film Django Unchained).
Jeffrey Greenberg\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

13 Jul 2019 \u2013 <\/em>Today, Saturday, is \u201cNathan Bedford Forrest Day\u201d in Tennessee, according to a proclamation signed Friday by Gov. Bill Lee (R).<\/p>\n

Forrest, for those who may not know their Civil War history, was a Confederate general who was elected to be the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.<\/p>\n

Forrest\u2019s bust is on display at the Tennessee State Capitol, and as Lee pointed out, there is a 1969 law on the books that requires governors of Tennessee to issue proclamations for six days of observation, including July 13 as Forrest Day. Two other days also pertain to the Confederacy: Jefferson Davis\u2019 birthday and a day to honor Robert E. Lee.<\/p>\n

Lee said that changing this law was not something he thought about. The law passed during a time when a backlash to the civil rights movement saw a perverse resurgence in efforts to honor Confederate historical figures.<\/p>\n

TO CONTINUE READING Go to Original \u2013 thinkprogress.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

13 Jul 2019 \u2013 Today is \u201cNathan Bedford Forrest Day\u201d in Tennessee, according to a proclamation signed by Gov. Bill Lee (R). Forrest, for those who may not know their Civil War history, was a Confederate general who was elected to be the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. He was also a slave trader and perpetrator of the Fort Pillow Massacre of hundreds of black Union troops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":137661,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[120,260,499,109,103,985,70,126],"class_list":["post-137660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-conflict","tag-history","tag-kkk","tag-politics","tag-racism","tag-social-justice","tag-usa","tag-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}