Keira Giacometti

8 May 2025

Helen Plane, a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, proposed in 1910 that a monument to Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Army should be carved into Georgia’s Stone Mountain [1]. Five years later, in 1915, a man named William J. Simmons watched The Birth of a Nation. Afterwards, he organized a celebration atop the mountain to honor the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan [1]. After the ruling of Brown v. Board of Education, campaign promises from conservative Georgian politicians, and protests from Civil Rights activists, the mountain was bought by the State of Georgia in 1958 under Georgia Code 12-3-92.1. [2]. The code, which established the Stone Mountain Memorial Association (SMMA), required that the mountain be maintained as an “appropriate and suitable monument for the Confederacy” [2]. Finally, in 1972, 62 years after Helen Plane first suggested the idea, a stone carving of Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis was engraved into the mountain. 

The controversy of Stone Mountain has long been a heated debate. The land itself has become somewhat of an amusement park, with golf courses, hiking trails, small attractions, a dinosaur festival, a resort, and more [2, 3]. The draw of the park is allegedly the natural beauty of the mountain, not the manufactured Confederate monument. However, outspoken groups like the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the League of the South argue that Stone Mountain is a critical piece of historical artwork [4]. In their opinion, removing the monument means “their way of life and legacy [will be] under attack [4]. Others, such as former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young, who was with Martin Luther King Jr. when he died, believes “[the monument] is a tremendous carving and I don’t want to see it destroyed” [4]. 

Stone Mountain raises the question: how do we respect art and ensure we remember the past without harming others? President of the Young Democrats of Georgia, Parker Short says, “This is not a humble monument to the Georgians who, you know, fought in the Civil War. This is three generals who commanded an insurrection against the United States carved upon a mountain” [5]. Sometimes, attractions are created with underlying political biases, either accidentally or purposefully. Take Walter Knott’s Berry Farm’s Ghost Town, for example. Knott hid his distaste with FDR’s management of the Great Depression in his gold rush attractions [6]. It is not obvious nor does it harm the casual tourist. The same cannot be said for Stone Mountain. The carving of Lee, Jackson, and Jefferson is a blatant Confederate Mount Rushmore that honors leaders of a failed opposition to the Constitution of America. 

The SMMA has acknowledged that Stone Mountain contributes to the racist beliefs of the Alt-Right movement, and plans to open a “truth-telling center” in the fall of 2025 that will portray educational exhibits on Georgia’s Confederate history [5]. Yet, this is not enough. The policies that protect Stone Mountain–the aforementioned Georgia Code 12-3-92.1, Code 50-3-1(c), and Georgia Code 12-3-191, Section 7–need to be abolished. The carving in Stone Mountain can not be overlooked by a viewer. It can not be justified as “protecting history”. It is harmful and perpetuates the Myth of the Lost Cause. 

The Myth of the Lost Cause was written by Edward Pollard, and reinterpreted the Civil War by arguing the South didn’t lose the war because of uneven forces, but rather “because of poor leadership and a failure of will” [7]. Furthermore, Pollard believed Davis’ attempts to “leverage cotton as a weapon of state…damaged the war effort” [7]. Cutting off the shipment of cotton heavily reduced the amount of revenue needed to keep the Confederate Army supplied.  Additionally, other Lost Cause believers attempted to explain that slavery had nothing to do with the South seceding  [8]. Pollard depicted Southern women as saintly, and Robert E. Lee became a “sanctified figure” [8]. Thanks to women’s efforts, monuments and memorials honoring the Confederate army started popping up after the failures of Reconstruction. As time continued, racial violence and resistance to federally mandated integration increased, as did the number of memorials [2,8]. These were all perpetuated by the Lost Cause, and the effects are still being felt today. 

“Stone Mountain…[was] very intentionally placed to keep Black people in their place,” believes Cynthia Neal Spence, co-chair of Sociology and Anthropology at Spelman College [2]. No battle of any sorts took place on Stone Mountain. Rather, it was chosen because it’s a popular location to visit [2]. The land is no Gettysburg battlefield–a legitimate war zone with memorials to all who died there. It’s just a park. Georgia, by choosing to protect Confederate monuments in its legislation, has justified the inaccurate–not to mention extremely harmful–Confederate ideals.  They are further showing they will side with the Alt-Right’s fear of their “history” being erased, not the groups harmed by their actions. Those who want Stone Mountain’s carving to remain are, as Brent Legs, the executive director of African American Heritage Cultural Action Fund National Trust for Historic Preservation puts it, “[Weaponizing] art in support of a false ideology” [2]. 

So, let’s think about it. Has the SMMA and the state of Georgia put enough effort into justifying the permanence of Stone Mountain? 

Currently, the SMMA is pushing their $11 million “truth-telling” center. However, studies conducted regarding a museum visitor’s likelihood to read the text next to exhibits showed that only 10-20% of all visitors read the text. When they rephrased the question to “have you glanced from time to time at the text displayed in this exhibit”,  the answer “yes” jumped to 90%  [9]. Furthermore, another museum study showed that more people read when the label was either positioned closer to the exhibit, divided into three, or had an enlarged font. Even so, only 56% of visitors read. Those who did read the labels spent less time staring at the artwork [10]. 

Based on these studies, it can not be trusted that every visitor to the center will read the exhibit’s texts. Which means they may not know–or care–about the harm the mountain’s art is doing.  However, this is purely hypothetical. Until the museum opens, we cannot examine the effects of their efforts. 

What we can examine though, is what other countries did with art pieces of discredited regimes. After the fall of Nazi Germany, the state destroyed monuments, statues, Nazi-constructed buildings, and unceremoniously buried officials so that nobody could use the grounds as “shrines” [11]. In 2022, Poland removed twenty monuments honoring the Soviet Red Army [12]. Still, both countries continue to teach their history. The art is not necessary to explain that mistakes have been learned from. We don’t need a monument to explain, “the Confederates were wrong.” We don’t need to honor them at all. 

As easy as it is to say “we should just blow up the monument,” the actual removal of Stone Mountain’s monument is not that simple. The best chance of repealing the protections surrounding Stone Mountain came from the House Bill 794, which was introduced on March 3, 2023 [13, 14]. The bill would have renamed the Stone Mountain Memorial Association to Stone Mountain Park Association [13]. It also removed the “Confederate Memorial” protection from Georgia Code 12-3-191, Section 7 [13]. Without the protection, the carving would slowly degrade and be overtaken by nature. Removing Stone Mountain protections from Legislation would also require Georgia to stop honoring false ideologies that harm 33% of their population [13, 15]. Finally, the bill would cut the SMMA’s requirement to sell Confederate memorabilia [14]. The bill has been declared dead and Stone Mountain continues to showcase Confederate ideology to park goers [16]. 

Alt-Right beliefs are further infiltrating American politics. We must remember that the Confederates were insurrectionists who betrayed America because they wanted in part to own slaves. The Ku Klux Klan is a hate group that deliberately targets Black people. The fact that Georgia is refusing to amend the state codes to allow for the monument to be removed or forgotten is disgusting. History is not being protected; a false ideology is. Stone Mountain can still be a recreational park. It can still be beautiful, and it can still have a museum. It cannot be a vehicle for Alt-Right Americans to justify their beliefs. 

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Image via Wikimedia Commons

Works Cited

[1] Haley, Claire. 2022. “Stone Mountain: Carving Fact from Fiction.” Atlanta History Center. November 18, 2022. https://www.atlantahistorycenter.com/blog/stone-mountain-a-brief-history/.

[2] “Monument: The Untold Story of Stone Mountain.” 2022. Atlanta History Center. 2022. https://www.atlantahistorycenter.com/monument/.

[3] “Stone Mountain Park.” 2025. Stone Mountain Park. 2025. https://stonemountainpark.com.

[4] McKinney, Debra. “Stone Mountain: A Monumental Dilemma.” Southern Poverty Law Center, 3 Dec. 2024, http://www.splcenter.org/resources/reports/stone-mountain-monumental-dilemma/. Accessed 2025.

[5] Henry, Skyler. 2025. “A New Push to Change Georgia Law Concerning Stone Mountain’s Confederate Monument.” Cbsnews.com. CBS News. March 6, 2025. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/stone-mountain-confederate-carving-law/.

[6] Wills, John E. “Nostalgia for the Old West in Knott’s Berry Farm, Orange County, California.” Comparative American Studies, vol. 19, no. 4, 11 Nov. 2022, pp. 341–358. tandfonline.com, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14775700.2022.2143744, https://doi.org/10.1080/14775700.2022.2143744.

[7] Young, Patrick. “The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates by Edward Pollard.” The Reconstruction Era, 13 Mar. 2020, thereconstructionera.com/the-lost-cause-a-new-southern-history-of-the-war-of-the-confederates-by-edward-pollard/. Accessed 2025.

[8] American Battlefield Trust. 2020. “The Lost Cause: Definition and Origins.” American Battlefield Trust. October 30, 2020. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/lost-cause-definition-and-origins.

[9] Jacobi, Daniel. 2018. “Do We Need to Read the Texts at Exhibits?” Mondes Sociaux, February. https://doi.org/10.58079/u99l.

[10] Reitstätter, Luise, Karolin Galter, and Flora Bakondi. 2022. “Looking to Read: How Visitors Use Exhibit Labels in the Art Museum.” Visitor Studies 25 (2): 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/10645578.2021.2018251.

[11] Zeitz, Joshua. 2017. “Why There Are No Nazi Statues in Germany.” POLITICO Magazine. August 20, 2017. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/20/why-there-are-no-nazi-statues-in-germany-215510/.

[12] Tilles, Daniel. 2022. “20 Soviet Memorials Removed in Poland This Year and 40 to Go, Says Head of State History Body.” Notes from Poland. September 28, 2022. https://notesfrompoland.com/2022/09/28/20-soviet-memorials-removed-in-poland-this-year-40-to-go-head-of-state-history-body/.

[13] Mitchell, Billy, et al. House Bill 794. 3 Mar. 2023, http://www.legis.ga.gov/api/legislation/document/20232024/218465.

[14] FOX 5 Atlanta Digital Team. “Georgia Lawmakers Push to Remove Confederate Designation on Stone Mountain Park.” FOX 5 Atlanta, 21 Mar. 2023, http://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/stone-mountain-park-confederate-carving-memorial-georgia-bill. Accessed 2025.

[15] “Georgia Black Population.” BlackDemographics.com, 29 Mar. 2025, blackdemographics.com/states/georgia-black-population/. Accessed 2025.

[16] “Georgia HB794 | 2023-2024 | Regular Session.” LegiScan, 2023, legiscan.com/GA/votes/HB794/2023. Accessed 9 Apr. 2025.