After an email was released from Tennessee Democratic Party Chairwoman Mary Mancini that linked last week’s Charleston killings to a 1940 murder of a West Tennessee NAACP activist, her Republican counterparts vehemently denied any overt racism that occurred in the state. Republican Party chairman Ryan Haynes accused her of looking to raise funds from the unfortunate incident. “They’re trying to profit from a horrific situation. That is inappropriate in every sense of the word,” Haynes said. “It’s disrespectful to a community that is still living this horror. It is highly disrespectful to those who lost their lives last Wednesday night in Charleston.”

Mancini’s actions aren’t the only issue here. Republicans and Democrats are currently in opposition over the possible removal of the bust of former Confederate Army General and Ku Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest from the state capital building. U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., and state House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh, D-Ripley, are both calling for the removal of the bust of the Klan leader, stating that it has ‘no place in the Tennessee statehouse.’

The white supremacist general, who massacred 300 Melanoid soldiers during the Civil War, and served as the first Grand Wizard of the KKK, has had a bust statue in his honor located in the Tennessee state capital building since 1978.