Throwback Thursday – Stone Mountain

The southern US has taken a pretty bad recent hit following the church shooting in Charleston that took place approximately a month ago. The shooting was considered a hate crime after a young white man sat through an hour of a Wednesday night bible service at a predominately black church (Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church) before pulling out a gun and committing a mass murder of nine individuals. Since that time, the US has called into question what "white supremacy" means and how pieces of our history have, in the past, and will, in the future, continue to affect the psychological state of those that live in the south.

First, on July 6th, after protests outside the State House, South Carolina senate voted to remove the confederate flag from the premises. Following that, Amazon, eBay, and Wal-Mart, in an effort to keep up with the times, also decided to ban all merchandise with the confederate flag on it. South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley stated that while the flag was "an integral part of our past, it does not represent the future" (source).

Now the NAACP is calling for the removal of the confederate monument on the north side of Georgia's Stone Mountain. Georgia residents are divided. Along with a carving of Civil War leaders that is 825 feet high, larger than the carving at Mount Rushmore, Stone Mountain also offers a Civil War Museum located inside the park. While the property is owned by the government, the Stone Mountain Memorial Association maintains that the park is self-sufficient and not run by tax-payer dollars, but any changes to the park have to be agreed upon by legislature (source). The NAACP president claims that "Georgia's ownership of this property is part of government-sponsored hate, not history [and that] these depictions only further divide the nation and are why such symbols should be removed" (source).

The picture above was taken in 2007, long before the destruction of the property even became an issue. In my mind, that is exactly what the NAACP is asking the government to do – destroy property. I sincerely doubt that the confederate memorial is continuing to cause hate crime, but, then again, presumably, legend has it that a member of my family helped to carve out the monument. Given how many man-hours went into the creation of this monument as well as the large number of job losses that would occur upon removal of the carving (many of them black), I simply don't think destroying a carving (or any artwork for that matter!) is a viable option. We can definitely talk about changing the museum up and making it more pro-black, assuming what is there now is in poor taste (from what I remember there wasn't much there in the first place!), but I am highly against destroying art with the idea that art begets hate. (If so, why did the removal of the confederate flag not do anything about racism? And what are we going to do about the Civil War panorama located in downtown Atlanta? Should we burn the Martin Luther King memorial because it reminds us of segregation? etc…)

Anyway, I just wanted to do a throwback for a memorial that may or may not exist for future generations to enjoy. I struggle to imagine what the world would be like without a Mount Rushmore, an Eiffel tower, the Mona Lisa, or even the Spoonbridge and Cherry, because that is what Georgia would be like without the Stone Mountain memorial (imho).

What are your thoughts? Do you see Georgia's Stone Mountain as a piece of art and a historical reminder of our past or do you see it as a reminder "white supremacy" and cause of hate crimes across the south? Do you feel most Civil War Museums are in poor taste and should be altered to more accurately describe what slavery was like for black citizens? Let's talk. Both on my blog and with one another; let's solve these problems together, as a country. :)