Stone Mountain, Georgia
Stone Mountain looms over Georgia like a granite time capsule. The world’s biggest Confederate monument sits carved into its face, a leftover from the 1920s when the Klan held rallies at its base.
Today it’s a weird mix: part amusement park, part Southern history debate.
Here are some facts about America’s most controversial rock.
The Mountain Witnessed the KKK’s Rocky Rebirth
Back in November 1915, a guy named William Simmons and several men climbed up Stone Mountain in the dark. They lit a huge cross on fire that you could see all the way from Atlanta.
This wasn’t just some campfire gone wrong. This was the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan, right there on that big rock. Two weeks later, that racist movie “Birth of a Nation” hit Atlanta theaters.
The Idea Came from a Confederate Widow
This whole thing started with Helen Plane, a Confederate widow who ran the Atlanta chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
These UDC ladies weren’t just planning tea parties. They were busy rewriting Civil War history to make the Confederates look like heroes.
Around 1912, she got this idea to carve giant Confederate leaders into the mountain.
It Actually Got a Presidential Thumbs-Up
Then-President Warren Harding supported this controversial project in the 1920s. He claimed the monument would help Americans come together.
He also claimed that it showed unity and understanding could happen even where hatred and hostility once ruled.
Unsurprising, it didn’t sit well with a lot of people, but those complaints went nowhere.
The First Carver Had a Nazi Problem
The first guy hired to carve those figures into Stone Mountain was Gutzon Borglum, who had connections to the KKK and Nazi sympathies.
He only finished Lee’s head, because after a fight with the head of the project.
By the way, Borglum later carved Mount Rushmore.
Segregation’s Poster Mountain
After courts ruled segregated schools illegal in 1954, Griffin promised, “So long as I’m governor, there will be no mixing of races in Georgia’s schools.”
Then he pushed to buy the mountain and finish that Confederate carving while Black Americans were demanding equal rights.
Financed by Tax Dollars
In 1958, Georgia spent $1.1 million of public money to buy Stone Mountain. This happened right in the middle of what historians call “massive resistance,” when white leaders all over the South were fighting tooth and nail to keep segregation going.
To put that in perspective, while Martin Luther King Jr. (born just miles away) was marching for basic rights, Georgia was spending big bucks on a rock shrine to the Confederacy.
A Two-for-One Special
Governor Griffin didn’t stop at buying a mountain. He and the Georgia legislature also slapped the Confederate battle flag onto the state flag.
Even the Mountain Itself Has Ties to the KKK
Before the state bought it, Stone Mountain belonged to the Venable family. What the park brochures don’t tell you is that the Venables had deep ties to the Ku Klux Klan.
The park still has a lake named after them to this day.
The Even Built a Plantation Around It
In 1963, they built a phony plantation under the carving where they described slave quarters as “neat” and “well furnished.” They called enslaved people “hands” or “workers” instead of slaves.
They even hired Black actress Butterfly McQueen to guide visitors through the grounds.
The Confederates Already Lost Before It Was Finished
This monster carving wasn’t actually finished until 1972 by a guy named Roy Faulkner. It shows three Confederate big shots – Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson – riding horses like they’re off to a victory they never actually won.
By then, the Union had already defeated the confederacy.
The Sheer Size
At 90 feet tall and covering three acres of granite, this is the world’s largest Confederate monument. It’s also the biggest bas-relief sculpture anywhere, sitting 400 feet above the ground.
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