Stone Mountain was once owned by the Venable Brothers. It was purchased by the State of Georgia in 1958[4] “as a memorial to the Confederacy.”[5] Stone Mountain Park officially opened on April 14, 1965 – 100 years to the day after Lincoln’s assassination.[6] It is the most visited destination in the state of Georgia.[5]
Stone Mountain is more than 5 miles (8 km) in circumference at its base. The summit of the mountain can be reached by a walk-up trail on the west side of the mountain or by the Skyride aerial tram.
Confederate Memorial
Owned and paid for by the state of Georgia, Stone Mountain is the most-visited tourist attraction in the state.
The largest bas-relief sculpture in the world, the Confederate Memorial Carving depicts three Confederate leaders of the Civil War: President Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson (and their favorite horses, “Blackjack”, “Traveller”, and “Little Sorrel”, respectively). The entire carved surface measures 1.57 acres (6,400 m2). The carving of the three men towers 400 feet (120 m) above the ground, measures 76 by 158 feet (23 by 48 m), and is recessed 42 feet (13 m) into the mountain. The deepest point of the carving is at Lee’s right elbow, which is 12 feet (3.7 m) to the mountain’s surface.[15]
“Who first conceived of a Confederate memorial on the side of Stone Mountain has long been a matter of debate….. The written evidence…points to Francis Ticknor, a nineteenth-century physician and poet from Jones County, Georgia…in an 1869 poem…. William H. Terrell, an Atlanta attorney and son of a Confederate veteran, …suggested it publicly on May 26, 1914 in an editorial for the Atlanta Constitution.”[16]:55 Three weeks later, Georgian John Temple Graves, editor of the New York American, suggested it should have a 70 feet (21 m) statue of Robert E. Lee.[16]:56
The project was greatly advanced by Mrs. C. Helen Plane,[17] a charter member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and first president and Honorary Life President of the Georgia State Division.[16]:57 After obtaining the approval of the Georgia UDC, she set up the UDC Stone Mountain Memorial Association. It was she who chose Gutzon Borglum and invited him to visit the mountain (although, despite his Ku Klux Klan involvement,[16]:79 she “would not shake his hand—he was, after all, a Yankee”).[16]:58–59 She met him at the Atlanta train station, took him to the family’s summer home, Mont Rest, at the foot of the mountain, and introduced him to Sam Venable,[16]:59 also active in the Klan and owner of the mountain.
Borglum’s original plan was spectacular: five groups of figures, sixty-five mounted officers representing the states (to be chosen by the states), General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his cavalry — some 700 to 1,000 figures, each from 35 feet (11 m) to 50 feet (15 m) high. In addition, Borglum planned a room cut 60 feet (18 m) into the mountain, 320 feet (98 m) wide, and 40 feet (12 m) high, faced by 13 columns.[16]:59–60
Venable deeded the north face of the mountain to the UDC in 1916, on condition that it complete a sizeable Civil War monument in 12 years. Finances as well as technical problems slowed progress. The US Mint issued a 1925 Commemorative silver US half dollar, bearing the words “Stone Mountain”, as a fundraiser for the monument.[18] This issue, which required the approval of both the 1926 Congress and President Calvin Coolidge, was the largest issue of commemorative coins by the U.S. government up to that time.[16]:81
Financial conflicts between Borglum and the Association led to his firing in 1925.[16]:85 He destroyed his models, claiming that they were his property, but the Association disagreed and had a warrant issued for his arrest. He was warned of the arrest and narrowly escaped to North Carolina, whose governor, Angus McLean, refused to extradite him, [16]:89 though he could not return to Georgia. The affair was highly publicized and there was much discussion and discord, including discord between Sam Venable, the Association, and its president Hollins Randolph.[16]:103, 116–119 The face of Lee that Borglum had partially completed was blasted off the mountain in 1928.[16]:111
Borglum’s next major project was Mount Rushmore.
After a number of sculptors turned them down,[16]:97 Augustus Lukeman took up the work in 1925, with a different, smaller design. Fundraising was even more difficult after the public debate and name-calling, and work stopped in 1928. In 1941 segregationist Governor Eugene Talmadge formed the Stone Mountain Memorial Association (SMMA) to continue work on the memorial, but the project was delayed once again by the U.S. entry into World War II (1941–45).[19]
In response to Brown v. Board of Education of 1954 and the birth of the Civil Rights Movement, in 1958, at the urging of segregationist Governor Marvin Griffin,[6]:21 the Georgia legislature approved a measure to purchase Stone Mountain at a price of $1,125,000. In 1963 Walker Hancock was selected to complete the carving, and work began in 1964. The carving was completed by Roy Faulkner, who in 1985 opened the Stone Mountain Carving Museum (now closed) on nearby Memorial Drive commemorating the carving’s history.[20] The carving was completed on March 3, 1972.[21] An extensive archival collection related to the project is now at Emory University, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1915 to 1930; the finding aid provides a history of the project, and an index of the papers contained in the collection.[17]
Stone Mountain Park officially opened on April 14, 1965 – 100 years to the day after Lincoln’s assassination.[6] Four flags of the Confederacy are flown.[22] The Stone Mountain Memorial Lawn “contains…thirteen terraces — one for each Confederate state…. Each terrace flies the flag that the state flew as member of the Confederacy.”[23]
Involvement of the Ku Klux Klan
Stone Mountain was “the sacred site to members of the second and third national klans.”[24]:262
The rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan – the second Klan — was inspired by D. W. Griffith’s 1915 Klan-glorifying film, The Birth of a Nation.[25] It was followed in August by the highly publicized lynching of Leo Frank in nearby Marietta, Georgia. On November 25 of the same year, Thanksgiving Day, a small group, including fifteen robed and hooded “charter members” of the new organization, met at the summit of Stone Mountain to create a new iteration of the Klan. They were led by William J. Simmons, and included two elderly members of the original Klan. As part of their ceremony, they set up on the summit an altar covered with a flag, opened a Bible, and burned a 16-foot cross.[6]:20[26]
Stone Mountain was the location of an annual Labor Day cross-burning ceremony for the next 50 years,[27] only ending when the state condemned the property.
Fundraising for the monument resumed in 1923. In October of that year, Venable granted the Klan easement with perpetual right to hold celebrations as they desired.[28] The influence of the UDC continued, in support of Mrs. Plane’s vision of a carving explicitly for the purpose of creating a Confederate memorial. She suggested in a letter to the first sculptor, Gutzon Borglum:
I feel it is due to the Klan[,] which saved us from Negro dominations [sic] and carpetbag rule, that it be immortalized on Stone Mountain. Why not represent a small group of them in their nightly uniform approaching in the distance?[6]:21[19]
The UDC established the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial Association (SMCMA) for fundraising and on-site supervision of the project. Venable and Borglum, who were both closely associated with the Klan, arranged to pack the SMCMA with Klan members.[29] The SMCMA, along with the United Daughters of the Confederacy, continued fundraising efforts. Of the $250,000 raised, part came from the federal government, which in 1925 issued special fifty-cent coins with the soldiers Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson on them.[30] The image on the verso of the coin was based on “The Last Meeting of Lee and Jackson”,[31] executed in 1869 by Everett B. D. Fabrino Julio (American, b. St. Helena 1843 – 1879, emigrated to US 1860), itself an icon of Lost Cause mythology; it is now in the American Civil War Museum (until 2012 the Museum of the Confederacy).[32] When the state completed the purchase in 1960, it condemned the property to void Venable’s agreement to allow the Klan perpetual right to hold meetings on the premises.[29]
Content retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Mountain.
Location Map