Skip to main content. Oct 27, - News. Thomas Wheatley. But none of his plans were destined to be achieved. Wherever the group popped up , acts of terror committed against innocent African-Americans, Catholics and immigrants were sure to follow.
With only three years to go before the land deed from the Venables was set to expire they had granted 12 years to finish the memorial , a second sculptor was brought in.
But Augustus Lukeman barely had time to remove the work Borglum had done and start work on a carving of three figures on horseback when he was forced to abandon the project in The deed expired, the Venable family took back their property, and the mountain remained untouched for 36 years.
But with the Brown v. Board of Education decision that segregated schools were unconstitutional, and the growing influence of the Civil Rights Movement, the time had come for renewed action. He then made the Stone Mountain Memorial Association a state authority , meaning the governor would appoint the board of directors but the association would receive no tax dollars.
After Walter Kirkland Hancock was chosen to lead the sculpting efforts, work resumed in after a nearlyyear hiatus. The memorial became the largest high relief sculpture in the world, depicting Davis, Lee and Jackson on horseback, their figures stretched across three acres. Today, with 4 million visitors coming to the park each year, the mountain has changed little but the message has shifted. While nature and the memorial are still featured, its theme-park attractions include a 4-D movie theater, a farmyard, miniature golf, a dinosaur-themed playground and more.
While the violence at Charlottesville spurred new debates over Confederate monuments, controversy surrounding the Stone Mountain Memorial is nothing new. Some honor generals or soldiers; others bear inscriptions that critics say wrongly gloss over slavery as a reason for the Civil War or portray the Confederate cause as noble.
Work on the Stone Mountain sculpture languished until the state bought the mountain and surrounding land in for a public park. Finishing the monument gained renewed urgency amid resistance from Georgia and other Southern states to the civil rights movement and efforts to end segregation.
Today, the park 15 miles 25 kilometers northeast of downtown Atlanta markets itself as a family theme park rather than a monument to the Confederacy. It attracts large numbers of tourists and other visitors interested in hiking to the top of the mountain or walking the grounds. Still, it is replete with Confederate imagery. But the largest Confederate monument ever crafted — colossal figures carved into the solid rock of a Georgia mountainside — may outlast them all.
Robert E. Thomas J. The carving measures feet across and 90 feet tall. Numerous Confederate statues and monuments to American slave owners have come down across the South amid recent protests against racial injustice.
After organizing a protest where thousands marched in neighboring Atlanta , year-old Zoe Bambara held a demonstration June 4 with a much smaller group — her permit allowed no more than 25 — inside the state park where the sculpture has drawn millions of tourists for decades. It hurts to see those people celebrated and a memorial dedicated to them.
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