called out Stone Mountain by name from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in his 1963 “I Have A Dream” speech - “Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia” - and there’s also a reason the state of Georgia kept on working on the carving for another decade after that speech. So it’s no coincidence, then, that the mountain has become a rallying point for both defenders of the “Lost Cause” and demonstrators who argue that the Confederacy doesn’t deserve the kind of sanctification that comes from being one of the world’s largest works of art. They did so by burning a kerosene-soaked 16-foot cross, and the next year, initial work began on the carving. Fifteen local white people of the era, inspired by the film Birth of a Nation, sought to re-create the Klan that had existed for a few years during Reconstruction. The mountain also holds the dubious distinction of hosting the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan in 1915, as well as the Klan’s first recorded cross burning. A vast lawn sits in front of the carving, and flags from all 13 states of the Confederacy, as well as a full range of Confederate regalia, have at times decorated the park in front of the carving. Work on the face of Stone Mountain continued in fits and starts for most of the 20th century, stopped by wars and financial difficulties, but finally concluded in 1972. Lee was blasted off the mountainside, and work began in earnest on the current carving in 1925. Borglum was fired after disputes with the project’s financiers, and went on to a new project: Mount Rushmore. The project’s first sculptor was Gutzon Borglom, and he envisioned a cavalcade of more than a thousand figures representing the Confederacy. That was the intent of the men and women who first conceived of a monument on the mountain’s face, and that was the result of a carving that took a half-century to complete. These monuments and markers remind us of how far we've come not only as a state but as a country."ĭespite the fact that this has been a landmark as long as humans have walked in the Southeast, and despite the fact that it was a tourist stop long before the Civil War, it’s impossible to stand before Stone Mountain and not think of the Confederacy. "It is true that there are monuments in our history that do not reflect our values," Kemp said during the signing ceremony in April 2019. (Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images) The site is linked to many Klu Klux Klan gatherings and the state of Georgia's resistance to the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. The largest confederate memorial in America is carved out of the rock at Stone Mountain Park. Brian Kemp - most recently in the national news for reopening his state only weeks after the pandemic mandated nationwide shutdowns - signed into law a bill protecting monuments in Georgia from removal. The Georgia Assembly in 1958 legally deemed the mountain protected under state law “as a Confederate memorial.” Just last year, Georgia Gov. Changing street names and pulling down statues is one thing how do you begin to address a monument carved out of solid rock? It’s also, in the words of Richard Rose, president of the Atlanta branch of the NAACP, “the largest shrine to white supremacy in the history of the world.”Įven as demonstrators remove Confederate monuments around the nation, Stone Mountain has lurked, the final question in the ongoing effort to recontextualize the acts and sins of the Confederacy. Through a 1958 act of the Georgia Assembly, it’s a state-sanctioned monument to the Confederacy. Lee is the size of a nine-story building, and an adult could stand up inside the mouth of one of the horses. carved from surrounding rock) sculpture in the world, 90 feet by 190 feet. The “Memorial Carving,” as it’s dubbed on the park’s website, is 400 feet above the surrounding ground and extends as much as 42 feet into the rock. Lee, Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson carved on its face. It’s also hosted generations of tourists, drawn both to the awe-inspiring size of the mountain and the gargantuan carving of Confederate leaders Robert E. Capitol to the Panama Canal to the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. An egg-shaped mass that’s only the uppermost tip of a miles-wide swath of rock, its distinctive granite graces everything from the steps on the East Wing of the U.S. Located just east of Atlanta, Stone Mountain is an easily identifiable landmark when flying into the world’s busiest airport. It’s Stone Mountain, and it’s an enormous, indelible monument to the Confederacy.
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