MURFREESBORO, Tenn. (AP) — Members of a panel appointed to offer a recommendation about a Middle Tennessee State University building named after Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest will hold the first of two open forums on the topic today.
MTSU President Sidney McPhee announced in June he would engage the university community about the building's name. That followed a mass shooting at a historically black church in South Carolina that sparked debate about Confederate symbols.
Nathan Bedford Forrest is historically known for being a slave trader and early Ku Klux Klan member. The building houses MTSU's Army Reserve Officer Training Corps program.
A campus protest group is calling on the university to change of the hall immediately, saying that the committee is being used to avoid making a decision.
The public forum begins at 6:30 p.m. this evening in the Parliamentary Room on the second floor of the MTSU Student Union Building.