Rethinking Stone Mountain
This past Tuesday’s Morning Reads included a link to an article covering a discussion between the Stone Mountain Action Coalition, a group of citizens that describes themselves as, “a movement dedicated to a more inclusive Stone Mountain Park centered on the principles of healing, transformation and progress,” and the Stone Mountain Memorial Association, the official entity that was created by the Georgia General Assembly in 1958 to oversee and protect Stone Mountain as a public recreation area – and Confederate memorial – and whose Board of Directors is appointed by the Governor.
The Stone Mountain Action Coalition’s ask is not particularly revolutionary. They are not demanding that the carving of the Confederate leaders be sandblasted from the face of the mountain. They haven’t lobbied for the addition of Atlanta’s two dopest boys in a Cadillac.
From the AJC:
The group’s proposals include removing the Confederate flags that have long flown at the base of the mountain; changing names of streets and other park features with Confederate affiliations; and launching a larger branding effort that would focus the park on themes like nature, racial reconciliation and justice.
The coalition also suggested halting maintenance on the mountain’s massive carving of Confederate leaders Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, which it views as a potential short-term solution while working to change state laws that protect the monument.
These requests are straightforward and utterly reasonable, and are built from a legacy of hard work by organizations like the Atlanta NAACP and others to continually raise awareness of the ugly impact and racist legacy of Stone Mountain Park.
Here is why I predict that the Stone Mountain Action Coalition is a group to watch: one of the group’s co-founders is Ryan Gravel. If that name is familiar, it’s because Gravel is the person who incepted the Atlanta Beltline, which is arguably one of the most transformative catalysts for urban redevelopment and economic development in Atlanta since the airport, in his 1999 graduate thesis at Georgia Tech.
It’s tempting – and easy – to lob soundbites with your opinion of what should or should not happen to Stone Mountain as Georgia continues the difficult and utterly necessary work to evolve past the legacy of the Confederacy and the role our state played in the enslavement, discrimination, and institutionalized racism that Black Georgians have faced, and fought, for centuries. The emergence of a group that is not only committed to transforming Stone Mountain Park, but has the experience, connections, and advocacy chops of Ryan Gravel, is notable, and I wholeheartedly believe they are likely to find opportunities for collaboration with the Stone Mountain Memorial Association.
About Author
Teri
Teri Anulewicz is a Democrat who represents House District 42 in the Georgia General Assembly. She previously spent nearly a decade on the Smyrna City Council. A native New Orleanian and quasi-Texan, Teri graduated from Agnes Scott College in 1998. She's been a front page contributor since 2015, and she compiles each Tuesday's Morning Reads.
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Let me be as tactful as I can be. If Georgia’s African American population finds the Stone Mountain Memorial Association’s Memorial to the Confederacy hurtful and offensive, perhaps they just shouldn’t go there. If the biome, the fauna and flora, is particularly enjoyable to that plurality of our State’s citizens, then they should consider visiting the Granite Dome’s sister, Panola Mountain State Park. It is an official Georgia State Park, one of which all Georgian’s can be proud, and an appropriate place for “healing, transformation and progress,” as required by anybody seeking peace.
I don’t wish to shock or offend any citizen, but I often have passed by the monuments and parks of Auburn Avenue without the slightest desire to stop and visit. You see, Dr King, whom I respect and admire. did, in his life and by his death, absolutely nothing for me. In fact, my “Civil Rights” had been guaranteed in blood by my ancestors since the American Revolution, actually for more than a century and a half before that, and I deeply believe that all citizens have a right to commemorate and celebrate those dates and times in history where great events led to the freedom and liberties of today, as enjoyed by all citizens.
The War between the States, erroneously referred to as a “Civil War” was in fact to many Southerners a “War of Norther Aggression,” and many of our ancestors perished in the defense of our Confederacy. The Stone Mountain Memorial Association was created and exists to gladden our hearts and to remember the greatness and sacrifices of our ancestors, not to offend the sensibilities of any other race or culture.
Atlanta has thrived as a “City to Busy to Hate,” and it is unfortunate indeed that the hateful and myopic behavior of progressive liberal Caucasian academics and overt African American racists now threaten that harmony.
How much wiser would it be if those railing against the symbols of my heritage were to work for true reform in the City of Atlanta’s Public Schools, in the efficient delivery of Public Health Services to it’s citizens, in the creation of many more Employment Opportunities in manufacturing and service industries for young men and women of all colors. When I grew up in Atlanta, the city had four automobile plants, and local mills, mattress and textile factories, some just blocks from downtown, hummed with decent work offered to rural men and women of both races. Apartments and boarding houses provided low cost housing for thousands of laborers, millwrights, machinists and carpenters, and their families. Now those same streets are quiet, few factories are open, housing is gentrified, segregated and costly; the homeless roam beneath modern multi-lane overpasses, and a majority of downtown employees drive or ride in daily from distant suburbs. For the denizens of urban Atlanta there is far less hope than anger and despair; have you no better way of distracting young urban youths from your social and cultural failures than attacking my ancestors?
My ancestors have no hold on you, for at least six generations the progeny of enslaved Americans have been freed of all shackles and chains, and from my perspective, now have no racial limits on their ability to achieve and accomplish their hopes and dreams. No limits other than being mislead by power hungry politicians, party partisans, and “Do Gooding” Caucasian polemicists who always manage to profit from their advice and assistance. “Healing, transformation and progress?” No, what is needed is “Dignity, opportunity and achievement!”
Basically, you are saying. Go the back of the bus, you will be more comfortable back there.
“How much wiser would it be if those railing against the symbols of my heritage were to work for true reform in the City of Atlanta’s Public Schools, in the efficient delivery of Public Health Services to it’s citizens, in the creation of many more Employment Opportunities in manufacturing and service industries for young men and women of all colors.”
Thank Heaven so many of us can walk and chew gum.
What a deft answer, so clever and erudite. My point exactly, so many of “you” obviously can’t walk and chew gum! I grew up in Atlanta, schooled there, worked there, left but always returned there, family and friends you see, at a time when there was mutual respect between the publishers, editors and readers of the Atlanta Daily World and The Atlanta Constitution. In my opinion, admittedly never humble, little respect exists today. It would no doubt shock you to know that sixty odd years ago many of Atlanta’s Power Players, white or black, and many of the more common “salt of the earth’ readers of both publications could discuss at length not only the impassioned writings of Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, but could quote from his book, “The Souls of Black Folks,” Atlanta’s adopted son, and world renowned sociologist, W.E.B. Du Bois, and his Pan African cohort, Marcus Garvey. I dare say the senior Dr. King’s generation was firmly rooted in the belief that the American Negro was the intellectual and moral equal of those who often later sat across the table from them at Paschal’s, and my oh my, wasn’t that fine Fried Chicken.
The point of my reply to your glib response to my comment, and this brief anecdotal and nostalgic remembrance is that the reason Atlanta was a “City to Busy to Hate” is found in the respect that “Equals” had for each other, and the influence Pillars of both Societies had on their communities.
Perhaps you, being from the patriarchal and misogynistic society of that lovely City by the River, Norleans (Have you been to Dooky Chase’s lately, or anytime over the last Fifty years? Fine Fried Chicken and straight talk there also, albeit without many of those Louisianan Patricians across the table) felt compelled, as do so many lost white youths, to come to Atlanta and save the poor African American “chillin” from white oppression, being certain that if they’d only take your advice about Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness all would be well with them. A Negro gentleman I had the pleasure of briefly knowing, Norris B. Herndon, appeared to have scorn and derision for… all the whites who have come down here to show us how… Every social and economic condition you quoted from my comment is factually correct, and all are a result of the immigration and influence of well meaning but incredibly naive and apologetic white girls and boys, from across the South and down from the intellectual wastelands of the North. I honestly can’t speak to the vacuity of the leaders and citizens of many other American and Southern cities and towns and hamlets, but I can say this with certainty, Atlanta would be more prosperous, more progressive, more egalitarian if its current generation of leaders favored in deportment, intellect and action the character and strength of their Grandfathers and Grandmothers, and sent y’all back from where ever you came. Pan-Africanisn was the equalizer, your “helping hand” the crippler.
Of course, Teri, I wouldn’t want you to go back to New Orleans, I so enjoy your morning reads.
“The War between the States, erroneously referred to as a “Civil War” was in fact to many Southerners a “War of Norther Aggression,” and many of our ancestors perished in the defense of our Confederacy. The Stone Mountain Memorial Association was created and exists to gladden our hearts and to remember the greatness and sacrifices of our ancestors, not to offend the sensibilities of any other race or culture.”
The civil war was never a “war of northern aggression” to southerners.
From the Confederate Constitution:
Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 4: “No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.”
Article IV, Section 3, Paragraph 3: “The Confederate States may acquire new territory . . . In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and the territorial government.”
From the Georgia Constitution of 1861:”The General Assembly shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves.” (This is the entire text of Article 2, Sec. VII, Paragraph 3.)
From the Alabama Constitution of 1861: “No slave in this State shall be emancipated by any act done to take effect in this State, or any other country.” (This is the entire text of Article IV, Section 1 (on slavery).)
Alexander Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, referring to the Confederate government: “Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery . . . is his natural and normal condition.” [Augusta, Georgia, Daily Constitutionalist, March 30, 1861.]
The Civil War was entirely about preserving slavery.
This BS of “northern aggression” was started in the late 1800’s and continues today. Fort Sumter was fired upon without warning by the Confederate militia.
Stone Mountain was once owned by the Venable Brothers,[5] “as a memorial to the Confederacy.”
And about the carving of the three traitors (who completely broke their oaths to “defend and uphold the US Constitution”) on the rock:
“The project was greatly advanced by Mrs. C. Helen Plane,[19] a charter member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and first president and Honorary Life President of the Georgia State Division.[18]:57 After obtaining the approval of the Georgia UDC, she set up the UDC Stone Mountain Memorial Association. She chose the sculptor Gutzon Borglum for the project and invited him to visit the mountain (although, despite his Ku Klux Klan involvement,[18]:79 she “would not shake his hand—he was, after all, a Yankee”).[18]:58–59 She met him at the Atlanta train station, took him to her family’s summer home, Mont Rest, at the foot of the mountain, and introduced him to Sam Venable,[18]:59 another active Klan member and owner of the mountain. Borglum also enlisted Luigi Del Bianco, whom he would also involve in Mount Rushmore.[20]”
“Stone Mountain was the location of an annual Labor Day cross-burning ceremony for the next 50 years”
So basically the state of Georgia owns a piece of property that celebrates the enslavement and repression of some of its own citizens. And you want those citizens to go find another place so they will not bother you while you celebrate the Confederate cause and the existence of the KKK.