A bid by Tennessee's governor to remove a bust of Confederate cavalry general and early Ku Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest from the state Capitol building has been rejected.
The State Capitol Commission voted 7-5 Friday against petitioning for moving the bust to a state museum under construction nearby. Governor Bill Haslam called for the removal after last month's deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Forrest amassed a fortune as a plantation owner and slave trader in Memphis before enlisting in the Confederate Army.
State lawmakers voted to place his bust in the Capitol more than a century after the end of the Civil War. Comptroller Justin Wilson spoke out against the unelected panel overruling the Legislature's vote to place the bust in the Capitol.
