Workers carry out the bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest from the Tennessee Capitol. Photo: John Partipillo
An affluent satellite city within Davidson County in Tennessee has won the latest round in its fight against the State Historical Commission to rename Confederate-themed city street names, potentially opening the door for other cities and towns to do the same.
Forest Hills, a community of about 5,000 people, fought for two years for the right to rename six streets in a subdivision built in the 1950’s and 1960’s by private developers who drew inspiration from the Civil War to name its tree-lined roads and cul-de-sacs.
Now, in a different era where million-dollar homes line bucolic streets, complaints from property owners prompted city officials in 2022 to petition the Tennessee Historical Permission to replace the street names — among them “Confederate Drive” and “Robert E Lee Drive,” “Jefferson Davis Drive” and “Robert E. Lee Court.” They were denied.
Chancellor Patricia Head Moskal late last week sided with the city in overruling the Tennessee Historical Commission’s decision that the street names are protected under a state law known as the Heritage Protection Act.
Nashville suburb sues Tennessee Historical Commission over Confederate-named streets
“The six streets identified by the City of Forest Hill … do not come within the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act’s definition of ‘memorial,” the ruling stated.
Street names, along with public statues, official county seals and other public displays are all categorized as “monuments” by the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act, subject to the authority of the Tennessee Historical Commission before they are renamed or removed.
The decision means Forest Hills can file a renewed petition with the commission to change the street names under the interpretation established by the Nashville judge, a precedent that could apply to other cities and towns seeking to reject privately named street names tied to historic events.
An attorney for the city could not be reached for comment on the ruling Wednesday and a spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office, which is serving as the Tennessee Historical Commission’s attorney, did not respond to the Lookout’s request for comment.
Attorneys for the city have long argued the Heritage Protection Act, which specifically seeks to preserve Civil War era monuments, should not apply to streets within subdivisions that were built on private property by private developers who constructed and named the roads before they were formally recognized and adopted as public streets.
Street names are not monuments, a designation reserved for public property under the Heritage Protection Act, if they were not originally built on public property, the judge ruled.
“Of course people back then — the developers back then — had certain ideas about whom they would like to honor, so they honored the individuals who are mentioned in our petition,” attorney L. Marshall Albritton argued before the Tennessee Historical Commission on behalf of the city last year.
“But that had nothing whatsoever to do with the city. This land was privately owned. The city has no input into the naming of that subdivision,” he said.
State attorneys argued in legal filings that the language of the Heritage Protection Act is silent about when a privately named street name, that later becomes a public street, is subject to the preservation act, and that the act requires that any street with a historic name that is now a public street remains subject to the law.