Park officials said they had appropriate approval for the proposal, including from Gov. Nathan Deal.
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The park is home to the “Confederate Memorial Carving”, a relief featuring Confederate President Jefferson Davis, General Robert E. Lee and General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.
The Georgia chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans said Monday that a proposal to honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on top of Stone Mountain could warrant legal action as “a possible violation of the law which established the Stone Mountain Memorial Association and charged it with promoting the mountain as a Confederate memorial”.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Jim Galloway proposed that the line from King’s “I Have A Dream” speech which references Stone Mountain be etched on the granite face, and from that initial suggestion, plans for a more elaborate monument emerged.
“Two years ago, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s speech, a small group of Georgia’s civil rights leaders met atop the mountain to ring a bell”, Stephens said in an email to journalists.
“We’re into additions”, Stephens told the Journal-Constitution,”and not subtractions”.
Also planned for Stone Mountain is a permanent exhibit on the U.S. Colored Troops that accounted for about 10 percent of the Union army in the Civil War.
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.
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The new monument is a wonderful idea, but it remains to be seen whether it will be enough to satisfy those who seek to rid the mountain of its Confederate symbolism.
