Dolly Parton is asking Tennessee lawmakers not to erect a statue in her honor at the grounds of the Capitol in Nashville, saying she shouldn’t be put on a “pedestal” given everything going on in the world.
An online petition in June of last year called for all Confederate statues across the state be replaced by statues of a “true Tennessee hero,” Dolly Parton. The petition, which cited the “Jolene” singer’s charitable donations and philanthropy as reason for the change, has gained over 25,000 signatures to date.
In early January of this year, Democratic Rep. John Mark Windle formally introduced legislation that would place a statue of Parton in the state’s Capitol in order to honor Parton “for all that she has contributed to this state,” per local news outlets.
But on Thursday, the country music singer took to Twitter to explain why she doesn’t think the timing is quite right. Saying she was “humbled and honored” by the lawmaker’s intention, Parton revealed she had “asked the state legislature to remove the bill from any and all consideration.”
“Given all that is going on in the world, I don't think putting me on a pedestal is appropriate at this time,” the singer continued. “I hope, though, that somewhere down the road several years from now or perhaps after I'm gone if you still feel I deserve it, then I'm certain I will stand proud in our great State Capitol as a grateful Tennessean.”
Calls for Parton's likeness to replace Confederate statues came in the wake of a national reckoning on race throughout 2020, when protestors across the country began to tear down monuments to Confederate leaders. Others — like those in North Carolina — were removed at the order of state's Democratic governor, who said he was trying to avoid violent clashes or injuries from toppling the heavy monuments erected by white supremacists that he said do not belong in places like the state Capitol grounds that are for all people.
In the midst of the civil rights protests in the summer of 2020, Parton expressed her support for the Black Lives Matter movement in an interview with Billboard.
“Of course Black lives matter," Parton told the outlet last summer. "Do we think our little white (expletive) are the only ones that matter?"
Parton has been a lifelong philanthropist. She founded the Imagination Library, which mails books to children under the age of 5 across the world to improve child literacy, and her million-dollar donation to Vanderbilt University helped develop the highly effective Moderna coronavirus vaccine.
Parton has said she gets “a lot more credit than I deserve I think” for her donation to Vanderbilt. The country icon’s name appears in the footnotes of a preliminary report published by the New England Journal of Medicine that discusses the production of Moderna’s vaccine. Parton is mentioned alongside other sponsors including NIAID and National Institutes of Health (NIH).
“When the pandemic first hit, that was my first thought, ‘I need to do something to try to help find a vaccination,’” Parton told the Associated Press in early February. “I just did some research with the people at Vanderbilt (University) — they’re wonderful people, they’ve been so good through the years to my people in times of illness and all that. I just asked if I could donate a million dollars to the research for a vaccine.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.