Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee says he's not planning to stop celebrating Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, slave trader and KKK member

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed a bill billing Nathan Bedford Forrest Day on Saturday in honor of the Confederate General, slave trader and chief executive of the Ku Klux Klan.

The law obliges the governor of Tennessee to declare each year on July 13 in the general's honor. And Lee said that he did not plan to do without the tradition.

"I signed the bill because the law requires it and I have not considered changing this law," Lee told Tennessean on Thursday.

The law caused derision on both sides of the driveway.

"I think many of us who are aware of what happened have wondered when a governor would ask us to help change the law," said the representative of the I & # 39; State, Harold Love, D-Nashville, Black, at WATN, the Memphis ABC affiliate.

C.B. Schmelter / Chattanooga Times Free Press via AP

Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, directly tackled the controversy Thursday, on Twitter, calling for a change in the law.

"This is wrong." Nathan Bedford Forrest was a Confederate General and a delegate to the Democratic Convention of 1868, Cruz wrote. "He was also a slave trader and KKK's 1st Great Wizard.Tennessee should not have an official day (tomorrow) in his honor." Change the law. "

Forrest was born poor in 1821, but eventually became successful as a plantation owner and slave trader in the 1840s and 1850s. He enlisted in the Confederate State Army in 1861 and received command of a cavalry unit. He climbed the ladder as a military tactician and eventually became a Confederate army general.

After the war he continued as a businessman and joined the Ku Klux Klan shortly after it was founded. He was the first leader of KKK, invented the Great Wizard.

Adrian Sainz / AP, File

A bust of Forrest remains in the Capitol state in Nashville.

In December 2017, a statue of Forrest on horseback was removed from Health Sciences Park Memphis. Memphis has a black population of more than 60% – one of the highest in the country.

The same law that imposes Nathan Bedford Forrest Day, Tennessee Code 15-2-101, provides for a Robert E. Lee Day for January 19 – in honor of the famous Confederate General. It also takes a Abraham Lincoln Day, February 12, and a Andrew Jackson Day, March 15.

Editor's Note: A previous version of this story indicated that Memphis was the capital of Tennessee. Nashville is the capital.