Most weekends, within the shadow of its controversial history, Stone Mountain Park is teeming with a diverse group of attendees.
Located just east of Atlanta, Black women gather to power walk along the winding trails while others climb the jagged rocky path to the top of the Confederate memorial in the 3,200 acre park.
Billed as the largest Confederate monument in the country, the stone carvings first etched into the top of the mountain in 1915 feature Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.
But the racial justice reckoning that began taking place across the country in 2020 after the police killing of George Floyd spurred the Stone Mountain Memorial Association to vote in 2021 to remove Confederate flags from a popular walking trail and build a “truth-telling” exhibit to reflect the site’s role in the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan.
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“We’ve just taken our first step today to where we need to go,” the Rev. Abraham Mosley told reporters at a news conference in 2021. Mosley, the board’s first Black chairman, was appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp.
With an $11 million budget allocated by Georgia’s General Assembly in 2023, the Stone Mountain Memorial Association enlisted Warner Museums to design a “Truth Telling” center.
“The interpretive themes developed for Stone Mountain will explore how the collective memory created by Southerners in response to the real and imagined threats to the very foundation of Southern society, the institution of slavery, by westward expansion, a destructive war, and eventual military defeat, was fertile ground for the development of the Lost Cause movement amidst the social and economic disruptions that followed,” the exhibit proposal says.
But their proposal, with the stated purpose of removing Confederate symbols, contextualizing the Confederacy and attracting new attendees, came under fire last week.
The Georgia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans filed a lawsuit last Tuesday against the state park, saying officials broke state law by planning an exhibit exploring ties to slavery, segregation, and white supremacy, according to the Associated Press.
Georgia law 50-3-1(b)(3) states no publicly owned monument on property owned by the State of Georgia can be relocated, removed, or hidden. Georgia mandate (12-3-192.1) also states the purpose of the Stone Mountain Memorial Association is to “maintain an appropriate and suitable memory for the Confederacy.” Both passed in 2019.
Controversies are also brewing at state parks across the country.
Capital B reported last week on a new effort to include signage with QR codes at National Park Service sites asking visitors to report information they come across that could be considered “negative about either past or living Americans.”
The intent is to carry out President Donald Trump’s “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” executive order targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The order, that came from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, calls for the review of “any public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties” that have been “removed or changed from January 1, 2020, through the date of this Order.”
There’s been no word on whether Trump’s efforts will impact the Stone Mountain Memorial Association’s plans to move forward with the “Truth Telling” center.
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