I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
-Percy Bysshe Shelley
Look on my Feed, ye Whitey, and despair!
A few days ago I made a post on Facebook about Stone Mountain. Here’s the text.
“The Atlanta suburbs. Millions of white folks who grew up placidly watching "Mambo Number Five" laser-projected onto the giant granite faces of militant slave-owners, now surprised and dismayed that the on-going murder of black men has resulted in property destruction.”
This post was met with approval by some (those I would have expected) disapproval by others ( I lost some followers), but mostly a stony silence.
The silence was also to be expected. I designed the post to be a little bit of a poke in the eye—because if there is one thing southern folks love, it’s tradition, and we generally hate it when people mess with our picnics.
I’ve talked about Stone Mountain before. In fact, my wife tells me that when the recent Black Lives Matter protests started to gain traction, she wondered how long it would be before I brought it up. I’ve noticed the same thing and that got me thinking—why does Stone Mountain come up over and over again for me when I talk about racism, oppression, and white privilege? And why does it cause such a visceral reaction among my fellow white southerners when I talk about it?
Before I go any further, let me do some housekeeping. If you came to this post already angry about my Stone Mountain comment, maybe skip this part and just get to the bulk of my essay. If you are a white ally or person of color, read on.
I’m aware that I am a white man speaking to a primarily white audience. I believe it is important to amplify black voices, and it’s especially important for white folks to not take the subject of systemic racism and make it about themselves.
That being said, as a white man, I feel I have a responsibility to leverage my incredible privilege and my middling skills as a writer into something useful in this moment. Because my audience is primarily white, and primarily southern, I feel like I can add some value to this conversation.
And so me talking to other white people about this issue seems to make sense to me. I’m certainly not going to put words into the mouths of my friends who are people of color.
So what I’m hoping to accomplish is to move the needle a little among folks who don’t consider themselves racist, but who are nonetheless celebrating, nay cherishing, a colossal monument to racism. If I misstep, let me know. I’m just trying to do the right thing here.
Monadnock Doo Doo, Doo Doo Doo. Monadnock Doo Doo Doo Doo.
As I said in the comments section of my original post, trying to explain Stone Mountain to people who didn’t grow up in its shadow is a difficult task. For those who don’t know, let me take a shot.
Stone Mountain is state-owned land upon which a private entertainment business operates a tourist train, a shopping village, and green space for hiking, biking, and picnicking. Christmas carolers and a snow park amuse in the winter. In the summer, there are fireworks, glass blowing, candy making, mini-golf, and other wholesome American activities. There is also a giant mountain upon which is carved a bas-relief (the largest in the world) of three Confederate folk heroes—Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson. This bas-relief was originally designed and carved by a known member of the Klu Klux Klan (it was later finished by a few different people). Every night during the summer, people gather in a park under the mountain to picnic and watch a laser show projected onto the face of the mountain (including the bas-relief) while pop songs from various decades play. Sometimes there are fireworks. At least as recently as 2010, Elvis would sing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” while the lasers outlined the Confederate figures and then animated them riding into battle.
Does that sound bizarrely tone-deaf to you? It does to me, and I grew up around Atlanta, where a picnic at Stone Mountain is practically mandatory at least once in your life. I mean, there is a LOT going on there. But to thousands, no, millions of suburban people living in and around Atlanta, Stone Mountain is simply part of the landscape, and any reference to it being problematic is met with indifference at best and panting accusations of “reverse-racism” at worst.
But Stone Mountain is a racist monument, and it always has been. Its very existence is steeped in hatred and white supremacy.
Let’s use the magic of history to find out why.
An Abbreviated History of Nearly Everything (Racist) to do with Stone Mountain
Geologically speaking, Stone Mountain is a monadnock - A big hunk of rock that is harder than the surrounding dirt and stone. As millions of years passed (gosh, we are already bothering the creationists here, aren’t we?) the soft stone and dirt wore away, leaving a big mountain roughly thirty minutes North of Atlanta. As this area isn’t notable for its mountains, the monadnock stuck out and became the focus for all kinds of human activity.
Notably, Stone Mountain became a focal point for the “rebirth” of the Klu Klux Klan in the early 1900’s. It was the site of cross-burnings for fifty years (until the state bought the land in 1958) and it was privately owned by the Venable Brothers—a root’n toot’n bunch of quarry owning good ol’ boys who also happened to be members of the Klan. In fact, the Venable boys liked the Klan so much they granted an easement to them so the Klan could legally hold activities on the land in perpetuity. The state had to condemn the land in 1958 in order to keep the Klan off it!
Okay. Back to gilded age. Anti-black sentiment was running hot during the time (see The Birth of a Nation among other things), and it was in this environment that the idea of a giant Confederate monument carved into the mountainside started to float around. Committees were formed by various citizens and groups, and soon enough a man named Gutzon Borglum was hired to design and complete the carving. Was Gutzon Borglum also a known member of the Klu Klux Klan? I’ll let you guess.
If you guessed yes, you win one tub of potato salad that you may eat in a non-racist location of your choice.
Gutzon Borglum eventually left the project and went on to carve Mt.Rushmore. Yep. Mt. Rushmore, America’s bobblehead tourist attraction (formally the home of the Cheyenne and Lakota people) was designed and carved by a Klan member. American history is fun.
We have to fast-forward over the next thirty years or so, because the project limped along as big projects sometimes do. Funding was always a problem, but there was usually help from the United Daughters of the Confederacy, one of the groups that had first conceived of the monument. Lest you think anyone was forgetting exactly what the purpose of the whole thing was, let’s look at a line from a letter that C. Helen Plane, a charter member of the UDC, wrote to Borglum.
“I feel it is due to the Klan[,] which saved us from Negro dominations [sic] and carpetbag rule, that it be immortalized on Stone Mountain. Why not represent a small group of them in their nightly uniform approaching in the distance?”
(Source - Wikipedia, but you can track down the primary source document easily enough).
Yep. C. Helen Plane wanted Klan members in robes marching along on the face of Stone Mountain. Remember, this is the woman who helped come up with - and fund - this project. Side note: Plane was instrumental in choosing Borglum for the initial design and work.
Skip forward to the Civil Rights era. The State of Georgia, never a paragon of forward thinking and social justice, stepped in. At the urging of segregationist governor Marvin Griffin, the state approved a measure to buy the land in 1958, and work on the carving resumed in 1964.
Southern states were famously reviving Confederate iconography during this time—this is when confederate flags started to pop up on state flags, a practice that still continues to this day (including Georgia’s flag, what a shock, what a shock.) The sweaty calls of “muh heritage” were, unfortunately, not drowned out by the obvious fact that embracing the iconography of the Confederacy was a great way to tell civil rights protesters and integration activists that “ain’t nothin gonna change, bubba.”
The park officially opened on April 15th, 1965. This was exactly 100 years to the day after the assassination of President Lincoln. I couldn’t find any primary source documents confirming if this opening date was purposeful...but given everything you’ve read so far, and given we are talking about a state where Robert E. Lee’s birthday is a state holiday (I’m not kidding)...what would be your guess?
Written in Stone
So here we have the largest bas-relief carving in the world—conceived of, funded by, and initially designed by racists, on a site chosen for its racist history, owned by a state government that bought the land for racist purposes. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Lee, Davis, et al. really were noble rebels simply fighting for their constitutionally-supported rights. Their images would have still been placed up on the mountain by racists, for racists, for racists reasons! You could laser-project the faces of Mother Teresa, Jesus, Gandhi, Abe Lincoln, and Paul Rudd on it every night for ten-thousand years and it wouldn’t make any difference. There’s a reason folks carve things into stone. It makes a point, as even the god-kings at the dawn of human history knew quite well.
And so, my fellow white people, this is why I bring Stone Mountain up quite a bit when I start talking about racial justice and white privilege. Because people around Atlanta love Stone Mountain. It has pleasant family memories for them. Memories redolent of American summers— apple pie in the park, fireworks, and the carefree ease of childhood. And I have no doubt, absolutely no doubt, that many, perhaps even most, of the people currently still visiting Stone Mountain in search of those memories do not consider themselves racist (I also have no doubts that racists and Klan members still flock there to pay their respects). On top of that, Stone Mountain and the company that runs the park make no great effort to elaborate on the dark history of the place. So we can, with the kind of effort we reserve for our most precious loved ones, forgive those who would look at the mountain and never bother to discover who or why those carvings are up there. But the window on forgiveness for unthinking privilege is closing, my friends. As it happens, the closing of this window was the point of my original post, though in my typical fashion I disguised it behind my absurdist writing style.
In any case, I beg you to stop for like, two seconds, and ask yourself what kind of message you are sending if you are aware of the mountain’s history and still choose to enjoy it or defend it out of nostalgia, stubbornness, or pure contrariness to so social justice movements. It seems like you should be able to read the history of Stone Mountain, consider the life experience of the people of color around you, and come to the conclusion that maybe those carvings are problematic at best. If it is your nostalgia that keeps you from this realization, then you should consider how privileged you are to let nostalgia outweigh the duties inherent in your shared humanity.
It is, literally, the absolute least you can do.
Next time:
A few paragraphs ago I made the argument that even if Lee, Jackson, and Davis weren’t militant-racist slave owners, the intent behind their images would still make Stone Mountain problematic. But, spoiler alert - they were. If you don’t live in the south, you might be surprised to learn of the grandfatherly nobility my “culture” has draped over these men. We will dig into that next time!
I realize I didn’t get into what, exactly, could be done about Stone Mountain. Always a radical, I’m in favor of blasting the whole carving off the mountain. Others close to me recommend a well-curated museum that doesn’t flinch from true history of the place. Maybe both?