Taylor Swift has called for the removal of monuments of “racist historical figures” in Tennessee.
“As a Tennessean, it makes me sick that there are monuments standing in our state that celebrate racist historical figures who did evil things,” tweeted Swift, who owns a home in Nashville. “Edward Carmack and Nathan Bedford Forrest were DESPICABLE figures in our state history and should be treated as such.”
Swift’s outrage comes after demonstrators toppled a statue of Carmack that sat outside the Tennessee Capitol on 30 May. Carmack was a prominent attorney and newspaperman in Tennessee and served in the state senate from 1901 to 1908. His statue was first erected in 1927. Swift noted Carmack was known for writing pro-lynching articles and promoted violent attacks against the trailblazing Black journalist Ida B Wells. Tennessee has said it would replace the statue. But Swift argued that would be “a waste of state funds and a waste of an opportunity to do the right thing”.
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She suggested Carmack’s statue be replaced with a memorial to Wells “for her pioneering work in journalism and civil rights”.
“Taking down statues isn’t going to fix centuries of systemic oppression, violence and hatred that black people have had to endure but it might bring us one small step closer to making ALL Tennesseans and visitors to our state feel safe – not just the white ones,” she said, adding, “We need to retroactively change the status of people who perpetuated hideous patterns of racism from ‘heroes’ to ‘villains.’ And villains don’t deserve statues.”
Swift said she would ask the Capitol Commission and the Tennessee Historical Commission to “please consider the implications of how hurtful it would be to continue fighting for these monuments. When you fight to honor racists, you show black Tennesseans and all of their allies where you stand, and you continue this cycle of hurt. You can’t change history, but you can change this.”
Several Confederate monuments have been vandalized or torn down by demonstrators in the past few weeks. Government authorities have removed others.
