Justin Timberlake Says Confederate Statues 'Must Come Down'

Justin Timberlake's Tennessee roots don't override his passion for protesting against racism.

On Monday (July 6), the pop vet took to Twitter to share a plea to have Confederate memorials removed or relocated in his home state amid the country's war against racial injustice. "When we protest racism in America, people think we are protesting America itself. Why is that the reaction? Because America was built by men who believed in and benefitted from racism. Plain and simple," Timberlake wrote. "If we plan to move forward, these confederate monuments must come down."

JT's remarks were in response to a tweet from the ACLU that stated a statue of Confederate general and KKK leader Nathaniel Bedford, the man responsible for the Fort Pillow Massacre during the Civil War, is still housed in the Tennessee State House.

From one pop luminary to another, Taylor Swift recently called out the Capitol Commission and the Tennessee Historical Commission to insist that they remove statues of Bedford, as well as another Confederate figure, Edward Carmack, from the state. "Taking down statues isn’t going to fix centuries of systemic oppression, violence and hatred that black people have had to endure but it might bring us one small step closer to making ALL Tennesseans and visitors to our state feel safe - not just the white ones," Swift wrote in a lengthy post. “We need to retroactively change the status of people who perpetuated hideous patterns of racism from 'heroes' to 'villains.' And villains don’t deserve statues."

Photo: Getty Images


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