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Perhaps America should pull down this stupid, racist statue as well as the Confederate flag

Perhaps America should pull down this stupid, racist statue as well as the Confederate flag

The week after nine black churchgoers were shot in Charleston, the use of the Confederate battle flag has come under increased scrutiny in the US.

South Carolina's governor said the state should stop flying it outside public buildings and several retailers have claimed they will stop selling it.

But the flag, used in the American Civil War (and proudly flown by murder suspect Dylann Roof), isn't the only monument to the pro-slavery Confederate states still visible in the South.

Take this big, stupid statue for instance:

This is a tribute to Nathan Bedford Forrest, a lieutenant general of the Confederate Army, who went on to become a founder and first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan after losing the war.

Incomprehensibly, there are monuments to him all over Tennessee - in the statehouse, in a state park and in the cemetery where he is buried - but this is certainly the most eye-catching.

Wedged between a railway line and the side of a motorway in the dusty suburbs of Nashville, the statue was created in 1998 by Jack Kershaw - the pro-segregation attorney of Martin Luther King's assassin who once told the Times-Picayune of New Orleans: "Somebody needs to say a good word for slavery."

According to the Tennessean, the statue is on private land but is clearly visible from Interstate-65.

(Picture: Brent Moore/Flickr)

As a result, councilwoman and mayoral candidate Megan Barry has urged the state's governor to restore trees and bushes to block it out.

Things like the Confederate flag and Nathan Bedford Forrest, they have their places in museums, but they don't have their place as a celebration of heritage in the public space.

  • Megan Barry

Although as Gawker's Sam Biddle points out, this "25-foot fiberglass monument to American racism" is so patently awful, perhaps it's the only Confederacy residue that should be maintained forever.

More: All the places where the Confederate flag is still officially used

More: Here's what John Oliver thinks should happen to the Confederate flag

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