Stone Mountain: Monument to White Supremacy

Aaron L. Shuman

Intro to Public History

University of Arkansas at Little Rock

Due: December 9th, 2020

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Introduction

Stone Mountain Park, located on the outskirts of Atlanta, Georgia is home to wide open

natural areas, hiking trails, and theme park attractions. The webpage of the park proudly

displays images of a Ferris wheel, families enjoying themselves outdoors, and the park’s motto:

“Atlanta's Favorite Destination for Family Fun!”1 Despite the outgoing and family friendly

image, this park is home to the largest Confederate monument in the world. In this paper, I

intend to explore the monumental carving of three Confederate leaders that adorns the side of

the park’s central geologic feature, Stone Mountain, through a discussion of the monument’s

history and legacy. I will pay special attention to how the monument came to be, who designed

it, what it commemorates, the individuals who backed its creation, and the significance of the

monument today, in the 21st century.

Birth of a Nation: Birth of Stone Mountain

In 1915, a film would take America by storm. Originally titled The Klansman, Birth of a

Nation depicted the then extinct and white supremacist Ku Klux Klan, as the savior of the South

who rolled back black rule and reasserted white dominance in the former Confederacy. Dick

Lehr, the author of a book on the film stated in an NPR interview that it “portrayed the

emancipated slaves as heathens, as unworthy of being free, as uncivilized, as primarily

concerned with passing laws so they could marry white women and prey on them”.2 Apart from

1Stone Mountain Park, “Stone Mountain Park,” 2020, https://www.stonemountainpark.com.

2All Things Cosidered, “100 Years Later, What’s The Legacy Of ‘Birth Of A Nation’?,” 2015,
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/02/08/383279630/100-years-later-whats-the-legacy-of-birth-of-
a-nation.
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being a huge success in the box office, Birth of a Nation struck a chord with those white

Southerners who still harbored racist feelings towards African Americans.

One of those white Southerners was William J. Simmons, who led a group of men to the

summit of Stone Mountain on November 25th, 1915. Simmons, inspired by the images of the Ku

Klux Klan in Birth of a Nation, burnt a cross at the peak of Stone Mountain and was initiated

alongside 16 other new Klansmen.3 Samuel Venable, the owner of Stone Mountain,

accompanied Simmons to this re-birthing ceremony of the Ku Klux Klan and was initiated

himself.4 The next year, Venable heeded calls that had persisted since 1914 and leased the

mountain’s north face to the local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDOC)

for the creation of a monument. 5 The UDOC, in turn, formed the Stone Mountain Confederate

Monument Association (SMCMA) to manage the monument’s creation.

The leader of the local UDOC chapter and President of the SMCMA, Helen Plane, had

called for a lone bust of Confederate General Robert E. Lee to be carved into the side of Stone

Mountain as early as 1914; however, by 1916, her vision had grown more grandiose. 6 Plane

wrote several letters to the carver selected for the project, Gutzon Borglum, another Klan

member, and eventual carver of Mount Rushmore, repeatedly beseeching him to include the

image of “the Klan which saved us from Negro domination and carpetbag rule” so that they

3 Atlanta Historical Society, “A Condensed History of the Stone Mountain Carving,” 2017,
https://www.atlantahistorycenter.com/assets/images/Condensed-history-of-Stone-Mountain.pdf.
4 Jess Engebretson, “How the Birthplace of the Modern Ku Klux Klan Became the Site of America’s Largest

Confederate Monument,” KQED, 2015, https://www.kqed.org/lowdown/19119/stone-mountains-hidden-history-

americas-biggest-confederate-memorial-and-birthplace-of-the-modern-ku-klux-klan.
5 Atlanta Historical Society, “A Condensed History of the Stone Mountain Carving.”
6 Atlanta Historical Society.
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might “be immortalized on Stone Mountain”.7 Despite the efforts of Plane, the Klan would not

be added to the planned carving; instead, Gutzon Borglum’s proposed bust of Lee leading

troops into battle was approved and carving began in 1923. 8

By 1924, Lee’s head had emerged from the mountain and was unveiled to the public;

yet, the relationship between Borglum and the SMCMS had deteriorated the point that he

would be fired from the project just one year on. A new carver would begin work later that year

and would manage to eke out part of a horse situated beneath Lee’s head before funding for

the project dried up and the SMCMS went bankrupt during the Great Depression.9 Over the

next 36 years, various entities would attempt to jumpstart the carving but to no avail. It would

take a massive upheaval in white southern society to reenergize the project.

Supremacy Threatened, Funding Secured

In May of 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court, in its pivotal ruling on Brown v Board of

Education, struck down the doctrine of “separate but equal” that had prevailed in the United

States since Plessy v Ferguson was decided in 1896. Fearing that such a case would embolden

African Americans, many localities, especially those in the South, began a coordinated

campaign of intimidation against non-whites aiming to force a return to the status quo. In

Atlanta, Stone Mountain and its half-finished memorial carving were to make a return to the

spotlight with a starring role.

7 Engebretson, “How the Birthplace of the Modern Ku Klux Klan Became the Site of America’s Largest Confederate
Monument.”
8 Christopher Lee Adamczyk, “Confederate Memory in Post-Confederate Atlanta—a Prolegomena,” Advances in

the History of Rhetoric 20, no. 2 (2017): 139–52, https://doi.org/10.1080/15362426.2017.1325413.

9 Atlanta Historical Society, “A Condensed History of the Stone Mountain Carving.”
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On the news of the Brown decision, a segregationist politician, Marvin Griffin,

announced that he would run for the governorship of Georgia. His policy docket was filled with

moves that opposed the growing movement for civil rights in the United States. These included

the inclusion of the Confederate battle emblem on the Georgia state flag, fighting against

desegregation, and finding funding to finish the Confederate Memorial on Stone Mountain.10

Once elected, Griffin began to carry out his agenda and secured funding for Stone Mountain’s

memorial and the establishment of a state park surrounding it in 1958.11 By 1964, the

centennial of the Battle of Atlanta, carving had resumed headed by the Stone Mountain

Memorial Association (SMMA) and their new carver Walker Kirkland Hancock.12

Hancock’s new design for the memorial would be less ambitious than Borglum’s Lee at

the head of a Confederate army; instead, the new carving would show Robert E. Lee, Jefferson

Davis, and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson riding abreast. In order to speed along completion,

Hancock’s team utilized “thermo-jet torches” with which, an experienced carver could “remove

tons of stone” each day. 13 By 1970, the carving was completed and the opening ceremony, cast

as an “occasion for President Nixon to reaffirm his social conservatism and commitment to

state rights” was attended by Vice President Agnew on the 100th anniversary of Lincoln’s

assasination.14 In 1972, the finishing touches were etched into the side of the Stone Mountain

10 Atlanta Historical Society.

11 Atlanta Historical Society.
12 Stone Mountain Park, “Memorial Carving,” 2020, https://www.stonemountainpark.com/Activities/History-

Nature/Confederate-Memorial-Carving.
13 Stone Mountain Park.
14 Robyn Autry, “Elastic Monumentality? The Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial and Counterpublic Historical

Space,” Social Identities 25, no. 2 (2019): 177, https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2017.1376278.

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memorial which was 190 feet wide, 90 feet tall, and in places, carved 12 feet deep into the side

of the mountain, making it the largest stone carving of its kind on Earth. 15

Commemoration

The monumental carving that spans the face of Stone Mountain, in the words of its

current custodians, the SMMA, commemorates “three Southern heroes of the Civil War”;

however, this interpretation of the memorial’s commemorative goals skims over the true

purpose it serves.16 From the monument’s inception, the carving has been at the center of anti-

black and lost cause narratives. The original erectors of the monument were members of the Ku

Klux Klan and those who revived the project did so to intimidate non-whites through the

prominence of imagery linked to slavery and the Confederacy. Further, the site itself is

surrounded by a “neo-Confederate theme park” that comes “complete with an antebellum

plantation house” that is designed to present a “utopian” version of antebellum society in

which blacks played a subservient and minimized role.17

It becomes harder to imagine the monument as a commemoration of “heroes” when

one considers the subjects of the memorialization. Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Thomas J.

“Stonewall” Jackson, are enshrined on the mountain for the role they played in the Civil War, a

war fought for the right of Confederate States to continue to own and profit from the slavery of

human beings. Despite the claims of the SMMA, it is clear that the carving on Stone Mountain

15 Stone Mountain Park, “Memorial Carving.”

16 Stone Mountain Memorial Association, “History of SMMA,” 2020, https://stonemountainpark.org/about-
us/history-of-smma/.
17 Atlanta Historical Society, “A Condensed History of the Stone Mountain Carving,” 12.
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was envisioned on white supremacy, built on white supremacy, and therefore commemorates

white supremacy.

Stone Mountain Today

After the carving’s completion, Stone Mountain did not disappear quietly into the

backdrop of Atlanta; rather, the monument has served as a continual lightning rod in times of

racial unrest. Being that the number of individual events and protests linked to the Stone

Mountain memorial are vast and the remaining pages for this paper are few, I will constrain my

comments to the most recent events tied to the monument at the time of my writing. The

racial reckoning of 2020 that was spurred by the police killing of George Floyd on May 25th this

year, sparked a national outcry and deepened a growing political divide in a contentious

election year. At Stone Mountain, the memorial carving stood as the backdrop to protests and

counter-protests on a litany of political issues.18

The protests, that were at times violent and attended armed militia groups supporting

both sides of the debate, were centered on renewed calls to remove the monument as a

symbol of white supremacy. 19 There were also rallies of white supremacist and far right groups

that claimed the carving as part of a southern heritage. Despite the outpouring of support for

both the monuments removal and preservation, a Georgia State law had the final word. The

law states that the carving “shall never be altered, removed, concealed, or obscured in any

18 Rich McKay, “The World’s Largest Confederate Monument Faces Renewed Calls for Removal,” 2020,
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN2441C7.
19 Steve Gorman, “Predominantly Black Armed Protesters March through Confederate Memorial Park in Georgia,”

Reuters, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-race-usa-stone-mountain/predominantly-black-armed-

protesters-march-through-confederate-memorial-park-in-georgia-idUSKBN24605G.
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fashion”.20 Currently, as the outcome of the 2020 election steals the attention of the public,

Stone Mountain’s fate and the demonstrations centered on its grounds have shifted to the back

burner of public consciousness. Inevitably though, Stone Mountain will return to the spotlight

in the future, possibly for its final bow.

20Jim Galloway, “The Georgia Law That Protects Stone Mountain, Other Confederate Monuments,” Atlanta Journal
Constitution, 2017, https://www.ajc.com/blog/politics/the-georgia-law-that-protects-stone-mountain-other-
confederate-monuments/IIyMj6919d5JFo40QMS4RJ/.
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Bibliography

Adamczyk, Christopher Lee. “Confederate Memory in Post-Confederate Atlanta—a

Prolegomena.” Advances in the History of Rhetoric 20, no. 2 (2017): 139–52.
https://doi.org/10.1080/15362426.2017.1325413.
All Things Cosidered. “100 Years Later, What’s The Legacy Of ‘Birth Of A Nation’?,” 2015.
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/02/08/383279630/100-years-later-
whats-the-legacy-of-birth-of-a-nation.
Atlanta Historical Society. “A Condensed History of the Stone Mountain Carving,” 2017.
https://www.atlantahistorycenter.com/assets/images/Condensed-history-of-Stone-
Mountain.pdf.
Autry, Robyn. “Elastic Monumentality? The Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial and
Counterpublic Historical Space.” Social Identities 25, no. 2 (2019): 169–85.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2017.1376278.
Engebretson, Jess. “How the Birthplace of the Modern Ku Klux Klan Became the Site of
America’s Largest Confederate Monument.” KQED, 2015.
https://www.kqed.org/lowdown/19119/stone-mountains-hidden-history-americas-
biggest-confederate-memorial-and-birthplace-of-the-modern-ku-klux-klan.
Galloway, Jim. “The Georgia Law That Protects Stone Mountain, Other Confederate
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georgia-law-that-protects-stone-mountain-other-confederate-
monuments/IIyMj6919d5JFo40QMS4RJ/.
Gorman, Steve. “Predominantly Black Armed Protesters March through Confederate Memorial
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memorial-park-in-georgia-idUSKBN24605G.
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https://www.stonemountainpark.com/Activities/History-Nature/Confederate-Memorial-
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