Nathan Bedford Forrest Day
Nathan Bedford Forrest Day is held on July 13. As per a 1971 state law, Tennessee's Republican governor proclaimed 13 July Nathan Bedford Forrest Day. This event in the second decade of the month July is annual.
Nathan Bedford Forrest was a Confederate cavalry commander during the American Civil War. He and his troops were responsible for the massacre of Black Union troops stationed at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, in April 1864, and he was the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. He was “Grand Wizard” until he ordered the dissolution of the organization in 1869.
An expert cavalry leader, Forrest was given command of a corps and established new doctrines for mobile forces, earning the nickname "The Wizard of the Saddle".
The Nathan Bedford Forrest Monument is a bronze sculpture by Charles Henry Niehaus, Niehaus, one of the most preeminent sculptors in U.S. history was paid $25,000 in 1901 to create it, the equivalent of $676,000 in today's money and all of it raised from private donations, depicts Confederate States of America Lt.