They will soon by joined by a monument to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., although it won’t be a statue of King but rather a replica of the Liberty Bell atop an 825-foot-tall column of granite.
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The Stone Mountain Authority announced plans to erect a liberty bell monument on top of Stone Mountain with the words “Let freedom ring” – a phrase included in King’s famous dream speech.
King had good reason to cite Stone Mountain in his speech, as it is closely linked to the history of white supremacy in the South.
Like Confederate flags near the mountain base and a giant carving of confederate leaders Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The Ku Klux Klan once held notorious cross-burnings on the mountain.
“The erection of monuments to anyone other than Confederate heroes in Stone Mountain Park is in contradistinction to the goal for which the park exists and would make it a memorial to something different”, the group said in a statement, which misstated King’s name. Neither officials with Stone Mountain Park nor the governor’s office could immediately be reached for comment. The trio were leading figures of the rebel Southern states that fought in the Civil War of 1861-65. It comes in response to debate over government-sponsored Confederate displays in the wake of the June killings of nine African-American churchgoers in Charleston, S.C.
The group, which advocates for Confederate symbols, compared placing anything other than a Confederate monument at the mountain to flying a Confederate flag atop the King Center in Atlanta.
The association hasn’t taken any formal action, but the Georgia chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans is not happy.
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The Venable family, which owned Stone Mountain in the early 1900’s, leased the face of the mountain to the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1916 for the objective of creating a carved memorial to the Confederacy.
