August 2023 - “Stone Mountain"
The view was great from the summit of Georgia’s Stone Mountain. But hidden below on the sheer granite face was the world’s largest monument to white supremacy. Carved in bas-relief forty feet deep are three heroes of the Confederacy: Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson. When visiting the most frequented tourist site in Georgia, I was struck by how the majority of people ascending its 700 feet were people of color. I wondered how many made the effort despite what happened there on November 25, 1915 . On that date, on the summit, William Simmons and his hooded followers burned a cross to celebrate the rebirth of the KKK.
Caroline Helen Plane, a leader in Georgia’s chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), started the Stone Mountain memorial project. Originally the UDC mainly helped widows of Confederate soldiers keep up the gravesites of their beloved. Plane’s husband died at Antietam. But UDC’s mission grew to include the construction of public memorials. Thanks to Plane, Gutzon Borglum, who later created Mount Rushmore, began carving the project in 1923. Construction difficulties and a lack of funding stalled the project until the 1960s.
Despite Plane’s contention, the monument was never just about respect for the dead. It was not to commemorate a great battle. Nothing happened at Stone Mountain during the Civil War. Construction happened during two eras when there was violent white resistance to the progress of Black Americans – 1900-1930 and the 1960’s. During these times Edward Pollard’s book, The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederacy was revived and used to distort history. Pollard, along with other revisionist historians, downplay both the horrors of slavery and the importance of emancipation. The war was portrayed as a heroic defense of a noble and good society. It promoted veneration of Davis, Lee, and Jackson, as the “holy trinity of the lost cause.”
Marvin Griffin, who served as Georgia’s governor from 1955-1959, pushed to complete the Stone Mountain Memorial. Simultaneously he added the Confederate battle emblem to the Georgia state flag where it took up two-thirds of the design. According to Brent Leggs of the African American Heritage Cultural Action Fund, Griffin’s intention was to “weaponize art” to prop up white supremacy.
Today, Stone Mountain continues to draw hate groups. The park had to close in 2021 temporarily out of concern for public safety. Hateful symbols, like confederate flags, offend and harm visitors, particularly descendants of enslaved people. Some live in Stone Mountain Village which is 85% African American.
While the granite carvings are currently legally protected, the true story must be told. Taxpayer dollars should not promote racism. While personal sacrifice can be honored by maintaining gravesites of all the war dead, we must stop valorizing the confederate cause. As Cynthia Neal Spence of Spelman College puts it, “They fought valiantly to hold on to an inhumane system, and that’s something we cannot celebrate.”
Future action:
1) Support the Stone Mountain Action Coalition (SMAC), a grassroots movement dedicated to a more inclusive Stone Mountain Park focused on healing, transformation, and progress. They are calling for “removing Confederate flags, renaming Park streets and features currently honoring Confederate and Ku Klux Klan figures, and advocating for new legislation to address the restrictive Georgia laws that require the Park to serve as a Confederate memorial.” There website encourages you to sign a petition to remove confederate and KKK symbols and names from Stone Mountain Park. You can also sign on to Change.org petition aiming at similar goals.
2) Celebrate the progress made by activists. SMAC reported that very recently Confederate flags were removed from the start of the trail up Stone Mountain Park. They were relocated in a less frequently visited area. So, “it's a partial victory, but a victory nonetheless.” Also, when I visited the gift store, I was pleased that no confederate symbols were visible.
3) Appreciate the deep harm veneration of the Confederacy continues to cause. Stone Mountain is a base for events hosted by racist groups. Often historical distortion is purposeful, not a simple mistake. Imagine what it must have been like for Black people in 1963 to visit a Stone Mountain “plantation” where slave quarters were described as “neat” and “well furnished.” This is a purposeful distortion, not a simple mistake. I believe it was also intentional that Stone Mountain Park officially opened in April 14, 1965, exactly 100 years after Lincoln's assassination.
4) Appreciate the links between confederate monuments and books written by “the Dunning School” of historians who portray Reconstruction as a failure that didn’t heal the nation but only led to corruption. These historians also condemned giving the vote to formerly enslaved people.
5) Don’t forget that long before European settlers came to Stone Mountain, indigenous people held important meetings there. Should we see the carving at Stone Mountain as a type of desecration? Are there any parallels to the painting of swastikas at Jewish cemeteries or Taliban destruction of Buddhist sculptures?
6) Consider viewing the Monument: The Untold Story of Stone Mountain with friends and family. It’s an intriguing exploration of the controversial history of Stone Mountain.