Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Monument fight can’t get any bigger
Stone Mountain can’t come down overnight
STONE MOUNTAIN, Ga. — Of all the Confederate monuments under fire, few are more figuratively weighted — and literally fixed — than the 1,700-foot-high outcropping of granite outside Atlanta with carvings of Robert E. Lee, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and Jefferson Davis.
Covering more than 17,000 square feet of mountain and 40 feet deep in the crannies, the carving is reportedly the largest flat relief sculpture in the world. Looming over a popular public park like a Stone Age billboard, it was conceived by Southern Confederate groups a century ago, was the birthplace of the modern Ku Klux Klan and remains an icon for white supremacists.
Now, calls to remove what might be the planet’s largest Confederate monument have roiled Georgia’s gubernatorial election and sparked what could be the most complex of the hot-button rebel memorial fights erupting across the country.
Stacey Abrams, the African-American minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor, last month declared the carving “a blight on our state” and called for its removal. Several Atlanta Democrats and the local NAACP joined her. Many Republicans and Southern heritage groups condemned her position as divisive.
“Instead of dividing Georgians with inflammatory rhetoric for political gain, we should work together to add to our history, not take from it,” Republican Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, who is also running for governor, said in response to Abrams’ call.
Whatever the politics, Stone Mountain will be different than in cities such Baltimore and New Orleans, where statues recently have been spirited from their pedestals at night.
“This one can’t be moved,” said Emory University historian Joe Crespino, who has written extensively about the origin and meaning of Confederate memorials. “It’s the side of a mountain. You either destroy it or leave it in place.”
At Stone Mountain, Crespino said he would like to see officials add signage detailing the full history of the art, while also scrubbing the park of some of the more changeable tributes, like the names of Robert E. Lee Boulevard and Jefferson Davis Drive.
The area remained synonymous with Klan gatherings and white-supremacist activity for several years. But it was the surrounding outdoor amenities and a privately managed amusement park that began to draw the major crowds. There are busy trails, a golf course and a lakeside Marriott resort. A popular laser show plays to pop music each night across the face of the mountain — and the faces of Lee, Jackson and Davis.
Demographic changes in DeKalb County mean that a majority of visitors on any given day are African Americans or immigrants.
“Most people who come don’t seem to think about it at all,” said John Bankhead, spokesman for the Stone Mountain Memorial Association.
Most visitors interviewed recently agreed: Confederate history hadn’t been on their minds as they rode the gondola or the scenic railroad. But the park has been the site of white-supremacist rallies in recent years. The memorial association denied a KKK group a permit to burn a cross at the park as recently as August, citing public safety concerns.
In 2015, park officials adopted a plan to add a working “freedom bell” above the carving as an homage to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and this line from his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech: “Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.” But that effort collapsed under criticism from both sides of the monument debate.
“I don’t think there’s any way we can win with everybody,” Bankhead said.
And it’s not just the granite that guards the figures on Stone Mountain.
A portion of a 2001 state law — passed during the furor that stripped the Georgia flag of its Confederate Stars and Bars — explicitly protects the carving from being “altered, removed, concealed, or obscured in any fashion … for all time.”