For millions of years, all the way up through 99 percent of human history, Stone Mountain didn't have a racist rock in its body. However, after American slavery ended and it was replaced with Jim Crow, the beautiful bulge of granite became a meeting place for the Ku Klux Klan. Soon, as a middle finger to both southern progress and the Civil Rights Movement, it was horrifically defaced with an enormous carving of confederate generals—making what was a universal mountain for all into a very divisive place for millions.
Now Atlanta is the black capital of America and the city of Stone Mountain is a majority African-American town. But a deeply painful symbol stands smack in the middle of it, placing the park in quite a precarious position.
Park officials have announced they will be placing a monument to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the apex of the mountain to mark a moment in his "I have a dream" speech in which he mentions Stone Mountain (as a bastion of racism, it should be noted).
On the summit of Stone Mountain, yards away from where Ku Klux Klansmen once burned giant crosses, just above and beyond the behemoth carving of three Confederate heroes, state authorities have agreed to erect a monument to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Specifically, an elevated tower — featuring a replica of the Liberty Bell — would celebrate the single line in the civil rights martyr’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech that makes reference to the 825-foot-tall hunk of granite: “Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.”
“It is one of the best-known speeches in U.S. history,” said Bill Stephens, the chief executive officer of the Stone Mountain Memorial Association. “We think it’s a great addition to the historical offerings we have here.”
The “freedom bell” will, in fact, sound from the mountaintop. How often, or when, hasn’t been determined.
Of course,
racists will be racist and have already expressed their sad but strangely humorous disapproval.
Read on.
Ray McBerry, spokesman for the Georgia division of The Sons of Confederate Veterans, said that his group strongly objects to the plan. He said that placing monuments to anyone other than Confederate heroes on Stone Mountain is contrary to the park's purpose of celebrating Southern heritage.
See, it appears they have forgotten that Dr. King was born, raised, fought, and died in the South. He is Southern. The Civil Rights Movement went beyond southern boundaries, but it was a particularly southern movement as well.
This mountain is also southern, in that it is located in the American South, but racists do not have a hold on it. Furthermore, Atlanta has changed a great deal and the stories being told on this mountain must reflect those changes. The Civil War and the American South are much deeper, and much more nuanced, that the one-sided story being told there today.