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Forrest was a lieutenant general in the CSA Army and, by all military accounts of the time, led many successful military campaigns primarily in middle Tennessee. The MTSU Nathan Bedford Forrest mascot marches in the 1961 homecoming parade.Ī quick background on Nathan Bedford Forrest, for those of you unfamiliar. This post is not a call for political correctness it is a call for awareness, justice, and to end MTSU’s ahistorical association with a founder of the KKK. To be fully clear, I believe the name of Forrest Hall should be changed. A protest is scheduled for this Thursday. However, there is absolutely student movement.
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MTSU MAIL FORWARD SERIES
As of this writing, current MTSU President Sidney McPhee is supposedly holding a series of meetings to “revisit” the name of Forrest Hall, as announced via public statement on 24 June, although there seems to be no administrative movement as of right now. Like many universities, MTSU has an ROTC program unlike most universities, our ROTC program is based in a building named after Nathan Bedford Forrest, a notorious Confederate general with no connection to the university whatsoever. Second, this post is an effort to bring this historical context to a current (and ongoing) MTSU debate. By and large though, MTSU’s public image today is not significantly different from any other mid-sized public university with a mediocre football team…except for the fact that Nathan Bedford Forrest (one of the founders of the KKK) still has a symbolic presence on our campus. In the late-1960s and 1970s, MTSU successfully purged its brutally racist public image at sporting events, but remnants of MTSU’s racist “heritage” are still scattered throughout campus. This post is, first, a follow-up on Matt’s by analyzing the troubling-and ongoing-connections to the Confederacy of my current university, MTSU. In brief, Matt argued that administrative policies do not deter the display of Confederate flags at college sporting events or prevent “southerners from rallying and advocating for Confederate iconography.” In his words, “It appears changing the proverbial ‘hearts and minds’ of defiant southerners is a lost cause.” I like his use of the phrase “lost cause” here. Why does this symbol to the Confederacy exist at MTSU? Why does it persist? And why did (and does) a state university founded 46 years after the Civil War proudly associate itself with a founder of the KKK?Ī few weeks ago, Matt Follett wrote a great piece for this very blog entitled “ Confederate Iconography and Southern College Football.” In it, Matt connected Confederate imagery to sport through college football games in the South, primarily those at Ole Miss. But there is still an ominous structure with “Forrest Hall” emblazoned upon its side, named after a Confederate general and slave trader. For one, MTSU no longer has a man in Confederate garb on football sidelines, nor does the MTSU band play “Dixie” as the unofficial fight song. Granted, a lot has changed since the 1960s. Īs of today, Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) has a Confederacy problem. It will be a unique experience for you.” I didn’t know what he meant at the time, but I would find out.–Sylvester Brooks, MTSU Student and civil rights activist in mid-1960s,from an interview given in 2000Īuthor’s Note: Since writing this article in August 2015, Elizabeth Catte has written an article on Forrest Hall for the official blog of the National Council on Public History, available here. I remember him saying, “You don’t want to go to many football games.