Racism at Stone Mountain
Two events brought Stone Mountain attention during the twentieth century: the founding of the second Ku Klux Klan (KKK) there in 1915 and the struggle to complete the Stone Mountain Confederate memorial. Inspired by D. W. Griffith’s silent film Birth of a Nation (which romanticized the earlier heyday of the Klan), William Simmons, a minister and organizer for fraternal associations, planned the induction ceremonies that awakened the KKK from its slumber of forty years to take place a week before the movie’s opening in Atlanta. In 1914 the leader of the Atlanta chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), Caroline Helen Jemison Plane, and the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial Association (SMCMA) had decided to carve a memorial on the side of Stone Mountain. Simmons may have selected Stone Mountain as the location of the ceremonies because of the planned memorial.
Even more than the birth of the second KKK, the Confederate memorial gave Stone Mountain notoriety throughout the twentieth century. A product of the Lost Cause era, its proponents originally conceived the memorial as a symbol of the white South. In 1916 the SMCMA hired the renowned sculptor Gutzon Borglum, a northerner, to carve Robert E. Lee leading his Confederate troops across the mountain’s summit. These whites hoped that the memorial would serve as a symbol of sectional reconciliation. World War I (1917-18) delayed the project until 1923. Then, in 1925, with only the head of Lee carved, a growing rift between the sculptor and the SMCMA over artistic control ended with the association firing Borglum, thereby halting construction. With the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Confederate memorial remained unfinished.
It was not until the Courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development Stone Mountain
1950s that interest in (and funding for) the completion of the Confederate memorial was revived. Segregationists hoped that the memorial would serve as a reminder of white supremacy. According to historian Grace Elizabeth Hale, “The rising tide of African-American activism in the wake of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision reignited broad interest in Confederate symbols as many white southerners fired up for ‘battle’ with the nation again.” In 1958 the state of Georgia purchased Stone Mountain, making it a state park. Governor Herman Talmadge supported plans to complete the memorial. The state and the Stone Mountain Memorial Association (SMMA) agreed to carve the images of Confederate icons Robert E. Lee, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, and Jefferson Davis on the mountain and to construct a plaza at its base. In 1970 planners dedicated the memorial, and an estimated 10,000 visitors came to witness its unveiling.
Since the 1980s Stone Mountain has remained a tourist attraction, although many groups denounce the memorial as racist. Millions of tourists from around the world marvel at the natural scenery. The park has increased visitation by promoting such special events as the Yellow Daisy Festival, the Highland Games, and the Easter Sunrise services. Other attractions include a reconstructed antebellum plantation built in the 1960s, a skylift, a waterside complex, and a thirty-six-hole golf course. In 1996 Stone Mountain provided venues for three Olympic Games events: archery, tennis, and cycling. The most popular attraction in the park is the laser show. This show now symbolizes the promise of a New South, imposing over the Confederate icons another southern face: that of Martin Luther King Jr.