Since 1899, a 37-foot tall statue of a Confederate soldier has stood atop a towering pedestal in the downtown area of Franklin, Tennessee. Installed at the behest of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the statue's hat suffered some damage during its erection [sic] and so the nickname "Chip".

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“Chip” has stood in downtown Franklin since 1899.

After the strife in Charlottesville in 2017, more people added their voices to already longstanding local sentiment for "Chip" to come down, including Kevin Riggs, a pastor of one of Franklin's churches. (Riggs is white.) But removing Confederate memorials is no easy task in the state of Tennessee, where a state law, passed in 2013, raised the bar for what would have to be done, legally, to remove a public monument or memorial like "Chip".

The people who want to send "Chip" into retirement have not given up on the idea of having the statue removed, but in the meantime, here's the New York Times to explain:

quote For decades, when Hewitt Sawyers drove past the monument of the Confederate soldier standing tall in his city’s public square, he felt the weight of slavery’s long shadow. Mr. Sawyers, 73, had attended a segregated school in Franklin, about 20 miles south of Nashville. He read from torn books passed down from the local white high school. The courthouse offered a “colored” water fountain, and the movie theater did not welcome him on the lower floor. As Confederate monuments across the South began to come down after a 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., he wanted the 37-foot local statue, known as “Chip,” gone, too. “Chip represented a large part of the reason I was not part of the downtown arena,” Mr. Sawyers, a Baptist minister, said. “Every time I went around that square, it was a reminder of what had gone on.” Mr. Sawyers and like-minded residents did not get the statue removed, but they have come up with a provocative response to it: a new bronze statue in Franklin’s public square depicting a life-size soldier from the U.S. Colored Troops, largely Black regiments that were recruited for the U.S. Army during the Civil War. The new monument, which was unveiled Saturday before a crowd of hundreds, and five recently added markers tell the story of the market house where enslaved people were auctioned and the role that local Black men played in fighting for their freedom. Dubbed the Fuller Story, the four-year project led by Mr. Sawyers and three other local residents expanded the narrative of why and how the war was fought. . . .

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Sculptor Joe Frank Howard and the new statue that he's created.

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Among the first to see the newly dedicated statue of a United States Colored Troops soldier.

From the New York Times:

quote About 180,000 Black soldiers fought for the United States during the Civil War. Still segregated from white troops as they fought, they often faced brutal consequences if they were captured by Confederates. “I’ve seen a whole lot of Confederate statues in my day,” said Chris Williamson, a pastor in Franklin who also led the effort. “But I have never seen a statue of a United States Colored Troops soldier in person.” . . . Mr. Williamson said he has received pushback from some Black residents disappointed that the Fuller Story [the new memorial] did not go far enough in changing the face of Franklin’s downtown. If others want to push for the Confederate statue’s ["Chip's"] removal, that is their prerogative, he said, but with “March to Freedom” [the new statue] now in the public square, he has moved on. “I’m excited about the stories we are telling that haven’t been told,” he said. “I ain’t got time for Chip.”

"Remove a Confederate Statue? A Tennessee City Did This Instead."
Jamie McGee, with photographs by Sarahbeth Maney for the New York Times; October 24, 2021.
https://www.nytimes.com/202...ee-black-troops.html

[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 10-24-2021).]