<p>A project to disinter a Ku Klux Klan leader and move his remains to a museum started Tuesday, local US media reported, adding the work would be funded by $200,000 of anonymous donations.</p>.<p>Nathan Bedford Forrest was a leading pro-slavery Confederate army general during the American Civil War, and the first "Grand Wizard" of the racist Ku Klux Klan organization from 1867 to 1869.</p>.<p>A pedestal on top of his grave in a park in Memphis, Tennessee, will be removed first, before his remains -- along with those of his wife -- are taken to the new National Confederate Museum, WMC5 news said.</p>.<p>A statue of Forrest was removed from the park in 2017.</p>.<p>Debate over removing Confederate memorials has been simmering in the United States for years as the country examines its complicated racial past.</p>.<p>The issue is particularly sensitive in Memphis, where civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated on April 4, 1968.</p>.<p>Forrest, who died in 1877, was a controversial figure in Southern history.</p>.<p>A slave trader and owner of cotton plantations, his troops were accused of executing hundreds of surrendering African-American Union Army soldiers at the Battle of Fort Pillow in 1864.</p>.<p><strong>Check out DH latest videos:</strong></p>
<p>A project to disinter a Ku Klux Klan leader and move his remains to a museum started Tuesday, local US media reported, adding the work would be funded by $200,000 of anonymous donations.</p>.<p>Nathan Bedford Forrest was a leading pro-slavery Confederate army general during the American Civil War, and the first "Grand Wizard" of the racist Ku Klux Klan organization from 1867 to 1869.</p>.<p>A pedestal on top of his grave in a park in Memphis, Tennessee, will be removed first, before his remains -- along with those of his wife -- are taken to the new National Confederate Museum, WMC5 news said.</p>.<p>A statue of Forrest was removed from the park in 2017.</p>.<p>Debate over removing Confederate memorials has been simmering in the United States for years as the country examines its complicated racial past.</p>.<p>The issue is particularly sensitive in Memphis, where civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated on April 4, 1968.</p>.<p>Forrest, who died in 1877, was a controversial figure in Southern history.</p>.<p>A slave trader and owner of cotton plantations, his troops were accused of executing hundreds of surrendering African-American Union Army soldiers at the Battle of Fort Pillow in 1864.</p>.<p><strong>Check out DH latest videos:</strong></p>