(AP) Stone Mountain, Georgia A Confederacy organization’s Georgia chapter sued a state park that has the nation’s largest Confederate monument on Tuesday, claiming that officials violated state law by organizing an exhibit about the area’s connections to slavery, segregation, and white supremacist ideology.
The enormous carving on Stone Mountain shows Thomas Stonewall Jackson, Gen. Robert E. Lee, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis on horses.Although state law shields the carving from any alterations, critics who have long advocated for reforms claim the monument enshrines the Lost Cause ideology, which romanticizes the Confederate cause as a state’s rights war.
The Stone Mountain Memorial Association, which manages Stone Mountain Park, decided in 2021 to move Confederate flags and erect a truth-telling exhibit to reflect the site’s role in the rebirth of the Klu Klux Klan and the carving’s segregationist roots after police brutality sparked national reckonings on racial inequality and the removal of dozens of Confederate monuments in 2020.
In previous court filings, the Sons of Confederate Veterans’ Georgia Division also claims that the board’s decision to remove Confederate flags from a walking trail was illegal in Georgia.
The chapter’s spokesperson, Martin O. Toole, stated that it is illegal for them to go after history and try to alter the current political system.
East of Atlanta, Stone Mountain Park is a well-liked hiking destination and advertises itself as a family theme park. The monument, which is 90 feet (27 meters) high and 190 feet (58 meters) broad, was finished in 1972 on the northern side of the mountain. The carving was created in 1915 by sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who was later recruited by the United Daughters of the Confederacy to create Mount Rushmore.
In the same year, the movie Birth of a Nation honored the Ku Klux Klan during the Reconstruction era, which commemorated their resurgence on Thanksgiving night in 1915 with a cross burning on Stone Mountain. The resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan and the impact of the film on the monument would be covered in one of the exhibit’s ten sections.
In 2022, the exhibit was designed by Warner Museums, a civil rights installation firm located in Birmingham, for the Stone Mountain Memorial Association.
According to the exhibit proposal, Stone Mountain’s interpretive themes will examine how the Lost Cause movement emerged amid the ensuing social and economic upheavals because of the collective memory that Southerners created in response to perceived and actual threats to the institution of slavery, the cornerstone of Southern society, posed by westward expansion, a devastating war, and eventual military defeat.
The exhibit’s other sections would discuss how the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy promoted racial segregation laws, monuments, and educational initiatives throughout the South in order to uphold the Lost Cause doctrine. It would also recount tales of a small post-war Black community that resided close to the mountain.
In 2023, the General Assembly of Georgia approved $11 million to upgrade the park’s Memorial Hall and fund the display. The display is not yet open. A request for comment was not immediately answered by a park official.
on 2021, the park board also decided to replace the Confederate carving on the park’s logo with a lake.
Confederate troops are honored in the carvings, according to members of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans.
According to the lawsuit, the new display would totally disregard the Georgia legislature’s intent when it created and maintained Stone Mountain Memorial Park and repurpose it.
