Senior VA Official Proudly Displays KKK Grand Wizard Portrait in D.C. Office

“It was just a beautiful print that I had purchased, and I thought it was very nice,” said David Thomas, a senior official at the Department of Veterans Affairs, of a portrait of the Ku Klux Klan’s first grand wizard.

Inside Thomas’s meticulously decorated office, Nathan Bedford Forrest—a Confederate general, a notorious slave trader and a founding member of the KKK—wears a grey uniform and glares down on every uncomfortable guest who enters the room.

Titled “No Surrender,” the picture shows a relentless Confederate general back in 1984 who massacred black Union soldiers at the Tennessee battlefield despite their surrender. What it portrays, however, lingers beyond the Battle of Fort Pillow; it also showcases the unwavering white supremacy of it current owner who simply refuses to take it down despite multiple complaints.

One of his employees Gardner-Ince voiced her rejection to the picture years ago. “It’s been there for a long time,” she said.

“He said, ‘My wife told me I shouldn’t put this picture up,’ ” pointing to the Forrest portrait,” she recounted, “ ‘but I said, I don’t care; I like it.’ ”

Gardner-Ince is actually in the process of building a case against Thomas. The latter allegedly gave her poor performance review to punish her for complaining about his racist room decoration. She will testify before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the commission will decide the validity of her claim.

Thomas has worked at VA for five years and currently acts as the deputy executive director of the office’s Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization.

This is not the first time he faces complaints for racist behaviors. Three of his senior employees—all African Americans—currently hold charges of racial discrimination against him. Their lawyer John Rigby rightly argues that the display of a KKK leader in the workplace is itself proof that Thomas is, to say the least, racially insensitive.

“You don’t hire someone who puts a picture of the Klan in his office unless you’re” racist, Rigby said.

In fact, the portrait has provoked so much outrage that a petition was drawn up this week in response to it. Douglas Massey, president of the American Federation of Government Employees’ Local 17, took the lead to collect signatures demanding the portrait’s removal. He has gathered more than 75 signatures by now and does not plan to stop until he reaches 200.

Earlier this week, a Washington Post reporter decided to come in his office and painstakingly explain Forrest’s personal background to the VA director.

Surprised to learn that the man on his wall is a violent racist, Thomas insisted that he adored Forrest only as “a Southern general in the Civil War” and had never displayed the picture before he redecorated the room a couple months ago. How he manages to remain oblivious to the grand wizard’s real identity give the number of complaints he has received over the years is puzzling.

After an unimpressive performance, Thomas promised the reporter that he would dispose of the painting. It is unclear whether he would take it down anytime soon. After all, he still believes it is “a nice print.”

Featured image via John Rigby