The planet’s largest Confederate monument—Stone Mountain outside of Atlanta, Georgia—is the new national flashpoint in the growing campaign to rid public spaces of memorials to racist historical figures.
On Saturday, a predominantly Black group of heavily armed protesters marched through the park, calling for removal of the giant Confederate rock carving at the site considered a monument to racism. The group, known as the Not F***ing Around Coalition (NFAC) was comprised of several hundred people, all dressed in black.
Although African Americans appeared to account for the vast majority of the marchers, protesters of various races, men and women alike, were among the group.
#BlackLivesMatter protest at Stone Mountain Park, a popular KKK gathering site, in Georgia. An estimated 400 – 1000 armed black panthers marching. (@naomiruta) pic.twitter.com/qLIgVt8waf
— Anonymous (@YourAnonCentral) July 4, 2020
Of all the Confederate monuments under fire, the 1,700-foot high outcropping of granite with carvings of Robert E. Lee, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and Jefferson Davis is—by far—the largest.
Covering more than 17,000 square feet of mountain and 40 feet deep in the crannies, the carving—at nine-stories high—is the largest flat relief sculpture in the world. Planning of the monument began only in 1914. Funding for the project came primarily from the Ku Klux Klan, which regularly met on the mountain to burn crosses and the project’s first directors and promoters were KKK members. Their original plan was to depict General Robert E. Lee leading Confederate soldiers and Klan members up the mountain.
The park officially opened to the public on April 14, 1965 — the hundredth anniversary of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.
After the memorial was complete, “a ‘neo-Confederate theme park’ emerged around the site, including a plantation house, a “Gone With the Wind” museum, according to a report from the Atlanta History Center, The New York Times reported.
Stacey Abrams, the former minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives and the Democratic nominee for governor in 2018, declared during her unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign that the granite carving is “a blight on our state” and called for its removal. “We must never celebrate those who defended slavery and tried to destroy the union,” Abrams said.
President Trump’s unyielding push to preserve Confederate symbols and the legacy of white domination was crystallized by his harsh denunciation of the racial justice movement Friday night at Mount Rushmore.
My latest report w/ @PhilipRucker https://t.co/rRox4Xin5Y
— Robert Costa (@costareports) July 4, 2020
Removing the monument would take a lot of dynamite and require a change in state law. The Georgia code says the Confederate memorial should be “preserved and protected for all time as a tribute to the bravery and heroism of the citizens of this state who suffered and died in their cause.”
Common Dreams | Radio Free (2020-07-05T20:15:15+00:00) Stone Mountain, Georgia: The Flashpoint Now at Center of Confederate Monument Removals. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2020/07/05/stone-mountain-georgia-the-flashpoint-now-at-center-of-confederate-monument-removals/
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