All Memory is Prelude: Part VI
VI- “…from Stone Mountain of Georgia”, Essays from ‘Monuments’ project
(Researched and written 2016-2019)
What are we to do with the vast number of tributes to the “lost cause” that still remain across America?
There are innumerable small memorials to the Confederacy, as well as various other white supremacist causes, dotted across our nation. Though four high profile monuments were eventually removed in New Orleans under much bedlam, many more tributes to the Confederacy and white supremacist symbols of the Jim Crow era continue to quietly exist throughout the city. Many are overlooked because they are much less obvious. We would practically need an army of historians to effectively identify these stealth tributes that exist throughout the American landscape, whose original purpose has been lost in time to most living in the present.
Still, there are also some monuments remaining of gargantuan proportion.
Around 15 miles east of the city of Atlanta, GA, is a relief sculpture to the Confederacy that is nearly 100 feet tall and 200 feet wide. It is the largest high relief sculpture in the world. Prominently chiseled into the geologic wonder of Stone Mountain are the images of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, General Robert E. Lee and "Stonewall" Jackson on horseback, 400 feet off the ground. The honorary site was chosen due to the location's history in the reigniting of the Klu Klux Klan in the early 20th century.[1] This history likely played a factor in why it was selected as one of the specific pinnacles in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech: "Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!"
Today, Stone Mountain Park is a well visited destination for its natural wonder as well as its history. Visitors are able to buy tickets for a train ride or cable car “skyride,” both of which pass by the enormous sculpture. On occasion, park goers are able to sit in lawn chairs and enjoy laser light shows on the face of the relief sculpture, memorializing these leaders who fought to preserve the institution of slavery.
Our bewildering historical remembrance is on full display at Stone Mountain.
What is the correct solution to remediate a tribute to the Confederacy of such proportions, dynamite? Does leaving it to act as a reminder to a past we hope to eventually escape only prevent us from doing so? There are some of the opinion that without the presence of these prominent reminders of past transgressions, we are damned to repeat history, therefore arguing against the removal of any monuments or symbols of the “lost cause.”
This is not a completely uncommon sentiment even in the black community of New Orleans. These monuments can act as undeniable evidence to America's record of racial oppression; public scars of history. For some, these symbols from a repressive past serve as a reminder to stay vigilant and not take for granted the sacrifices and suffering of those who came before them.
But are these Confederate monuments the most effective public remembrance to accomplish this, being that they completely omit the suffering endured by black people in this history, while also continuing to act as rallying points for white supremacist groups?
What is a practical way of acknowledging these significant aspects of history and its figures without effectively also paying tribute to their reprehensible beliefs or abhorrent deeds?
This question becomes more challenging and complex when it becomes applied to our entire history, beyond the narrow focus of monuments to the Confederacy.
[1] Boissoneault, Lorraine. Smithsonian Magazine. 2018, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-will-happen-stone-mountain-americas-largest-confederate-memorial-180964588/