Pink Paint Splashed On Infamous I-65 Forrest Statue

NASHVILLE, TN -- Once named one of the 10 most terrifying pieces of public art in America and long a source of local consternation, national ridicule and general terror, the wild-eyed statue of Confederate general, slave trader and early Ku Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest that has loomed over I-65 since 1998 is now covered in pink paint after an attack by vandals.

Some time early Wednesday, unknown vandals - or perhaps, activist art critics objecting to the general's spike-tooth visage and the sculpture's general ghastliness - added the pink paint to the silver and gold that's adorned the statue since it was erected on the private strip of interstate-adjacent land in 1998.

Built by the late Jack Kershaw, a Nashville attorney whose clients included Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassin James Earl Ray, the sculpture is on land owned by retired businessman Bill Dorris, who said he's unlikely to strip the new color any time soon, as they "chose a real good color" which will "show up real good," according to The Tennessean.

"If they think the public will be pleased with painting it red, we will leave it red for a while,” he said according to WKRN.

The statue is frequently targeted by vandals, often dinged by bullets and shotgun shells and was fronted by a "Trump 2016, Make AMERIKKKA Great Again" sign in the days before the 2016 election. In August, the mayor of Oak Hill wrote Gov. Bill Haslam asking him to pressure the Tennessee Department of Transportation to move forward with a long-asked-for project to obscure the statue with foliage or a higher acoustic wall, a standing request to the state from the Metro Council since at least 2015.

Dorris said there are at least a dozen cameras near the statue - he owns several strips of property adjacent to the interstate, which serve as homes to various cell phone, radio and other utility towers - and that he'll be reviewing them in an effort to ID the perpetrators who, he believes, used paintball guns to give the gargoyle-esque pistol-waving cavalryman his new color.

AP Photo by Mark Humphrey