In the Spring of 2021, the state agency managing Stone Mountain in Georgia promised to begin altering the Lost Cause presentation of the Civil War that the site has been infamous for for over half-a-century. According to local news reports, more than a year later the agency has not even moved a set of four flag poles displaying versions of the Confederate national flag and the Confederate Battle Flag. The Confederate flag display is still in a prominent location on the way to the summit of the mountain.
There had been a contract signed last year to begin the move of the flag display to a less visited are, but no actual work on the project has even begun. Nor have roads in the park named after Confederate and Ku Klux Klan leaders been renamed. Although leaders of the Stone Mountain Memorial Association said that the changes would take “months not years,” in reality the park still reflects its origins as a shrine to the Confederacy and the founding location of the Second Ku Klux Klan.
When I last visited there a quarter-century I was amazed at the lionization of Confederate “heroes,” including a laser-light show on the mountain depicting Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis as fantasy Superheroes defending all that is great about America. The park’s “museum” was actually a Confederate shrine, and the recreated plantation (slave labor camp) at the park was filled with distortions of the history of slavery. My wife and I called it “Confederate Disneyland.”
Note on Photo: Photo is from the Atlanta Journal Constitution depicting Confederate Flag display at Stone Mountain hiking trail.
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