Alliance groups sue Stone Mountain for performances on racism and slavery
An Allied Heritage group has filed a lawsuit against Georgia’s Rock Hill Park, arguing that a new exhibition examines the location’s links to slavery, segregation and white supremacy violates state laws.
The lawsuit was filed by Georgia Division, Georgia’s Georgia Division, son of a Confederate veteran, claiming that the Stone Hill Memorial Society’s decision to relocate the Confederate flag and establish the so-called “truth” show with the original mission of the park and the original mission of the Confederate – according to what the Grogia law says in Georgia law, Associated Press.
Relief engravings of Stone Mountain (thinked to be the largest confederate monument in the country), Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, although the defender said the monument was a monument that honored the heritage of the South, critics have long pointed to its connection to the lost cause myth, which redefined the separatist nature of the confederacy as a struggle for state rights rather than preserving slavery.
The park’s board of directors voted to make limited changes in 2021 after racial justice protests prompted review of alliance symbols. These included moving the Confederate flag from a famous walking trail and commissioning an exhibition that would link the history of the site to Ku Klux Klan, which was famous in 1915 on the hill, and that same year the work on the monument began.
The Stone Mountain Memorial Society later hired a Warner Museum in Birmingham, known for its civil rights work, to open the exhibition. According to the company’s proposal, the project will examine how the trauma of war and reconstruction creates a fertile position for the lost cause movement, and how groups like the Union Confederate’s United Daughter and the sons of Confederate veterans promote it through public monuments, educational campaigns and supporting segregation laws.
The exhibition will also feature the story of a black community that lived near the mountain base after the Civil War, a narrative that attempts to expand the narrative beyond the creators and themes that usually focus on the monuments.
The Georgia Legislature approved $11 million in 2023 to fund exhibitions and renovation memorials at the Park Museum building. Although the installation has not yet been opened to the public, these changes have attracted opposition from the Alliance Heritage Group.
“It’s illegal when they follow history and try to change everything into the current political structure,” said Martin O’Toole, a spokesman for the sons of veterans in the Allied.
Located east of Atlanta, Rock Mountain Park is sold as a family attraction and hiking destination. The engraving itself measures 190 feet and is 90 feet tall and was completed in 1972, and decades later, after decades of working by sculptor Gutzon Borglum (who was sculpting Rushmore), Began worked on the project.
In 2021, the board also voted to replace the carved image with a more neutral description of the lake on the property.
The lawsuit argues that the proposed performance amounts to a “complete reuse” of Rock Hill Park and ignores the original intention of the Georgia Legislature to preserve the site.
