Posted on 05/25/2021 10:12:24 AM PDT by Kaslin
Ever since the craze of trying to erase the nation’s history by tearing down monuments that some people find offensive got started, there have been repeated demands to “do something” about Stone Mountain Confederate monument in Georgia. Unlike some of the typical statues that cities erect that can be dragged down during a riot with some ropes and chains, however, this one isn’t so easy for protesters to tackle. For one thing, it’s gigantic. It takes up three acres of space and it’s literally carved into the side of a mountain, as the name suggests. It depicts Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson riding on horseback. To get rid of it would require a significant amount of dynamite and a skilled demolition crew. Also, it’s one of Georgia’s biggest and most frequently visited tourist destinations.
In response to the calls for changes by BLM advocates and others, some alterations are indeed coming. But the mural is not going to be destroyed or changed. Instead, a new exhibit will be added to the park, seeking to tell the whole, complicated story of the region’s past, including the involvement of the Klu Klux Klan. Is this going to appease everyone? Obviously not, but at least they’re making an effort. (CNN)
A new exhibit that seeks to explain “the whole story” of the nation’s largest Confederate monument, including the history of the Ku Klux Klan there, is coming to Georgia’s Stone Mountain Park, the park’s board said Monday.The exhibit will be developed together with “credible and well-established historians,” the board said in a news release, “to tell the warts and all history of the Stone Mountain carving,” including the 1915 rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan on the mountain “and the 50-years of Klan rallies which followed,” until the state bought the mountain and land around it in 1958…
The monument has long been a flashpoint of debate between those who see it as part of the South’s heritage and those for whom it represents White supremacy. It cannot be removed under Georgia law.
Last summer, Stone Mountain was the site of simultaneous protests and counterprotests with armed participants keeping the authorities on edge. (You can watch a video report of that conflict here.) Thankfully, things didn’t get too out of hand.
As far as this new exhibit they’re planning goes, I don’t have any problem with it. The country’s history is complicated and people should have the opportunity to be educated about it, including both the good and the bad. Or, as the planning board put it, “the warts and all history of the Stone Mountain carving.” If the solution is to expand one of their parks and provide even more historical information, that’s a great approach.
It’s certainly far better than allowing mobs to descend on public property and destroy existing displays. I have to wonder how much more rational this debate could have been if people could have negotiated to have other statues and monuments expanded with additional features to add historical context rather than just smashing them to pieces in the dead of night. There’s never been any point to these attacks from the beginning. No amount of destroyed statuary will erase the past and make it so the antebellum south never existed.
Just for a bit of background, the Stone Mountain memorial is recognized as the largest bas-relief artwork in the world. It’s actually larger than Mount Rushmore, though perhaps not as famous. The park officially opened in 1965, but planning for the monument is believed to have begun as early as 1869. As a darker part of its history, the monument was considered to be “holy ground” for the Klu Klux Klan according to many historians.
My elementary school was White until 68, when a black family moved into a new subdivision in my neighborhood. I befriended him at school. Some kids said his family couldn’t own the house and it was financed by the government, I didn’t care as he was my friend - and my friend’s friend. Once, I asked him what his dad did and he told me that he was the VP of one of Hartford’s insurance companies. My parents told me that they (my friend’s parents) could afford their house.
This kid came over to the house once with my sister and a gaggle of her friends. That was some high-level high school clique-dom, do I don’t think any students had a problem with him. One day, a rumor spread so fast that it was probably true, that the teacher in question looked at him and said “Get your black ass out of my classroom.” He was kind of a cliche joke of an anachronistic cracker before that happened, so nobody was really too shocked.
Hopefully, the whole history, including the Democrat party's involvement.
Maybe the Democrats can find a large stone outcropping somewhere in Georgia and have a large statue of William Tecumseh Sherman carved out of it...to present the other side.
It was just a general remark to all, not about a specific comment by you.
Locally here a group of loudmouths was complaining about the school dress code to the point it made national news. See, it seems that 78% of the offenders were girls. Obviously sexist. Anyway, the superintendent, the dope, rather than saying the rules are the rules has a meeting to water down the code today. After the meeting, cries were it was NOT ENOUGH. So, my thought would be if I were he: going forth will be a designated uniform. But that is me.
Having gone to school in the 60s when dress codes were pushed back to just ware what you like, the power at the schools shifted to the students from the administration and it has been down hill ever since.
It can’t be removed because of Georgia law AND its on private property.
I call that Food of the Gods.
My grandmother (from Virginia) made those sandwiches and I long for them. She never put bread & butter pickles on them though, but they were available from a jar always on the table. The soft white bread that would keep your fingerprints...nothing like it today...bacon was better too - of course you saved the fat from the frying pan.
She also made the best potato salad ever - with sliced hard boiled eggs, the way I like it to this day. The potatoes were soaked overnight in French dressing. All homemade, of course.
Tea was eventually sweetened with artificial sweetener - b/c diabetes in my family. I hated it - that’s how I learned to drink unsweetened tea.
Yes, b&b pickles on the side, not on the sandwich; would make it too soggy. I (Virginia) ate my mother’s (Alabama) Southern cooking growing up, though as an Army wife, she broadened the menu over time. We often would visit my great aunt (Georgia) in the summers, and there was the benefit of the best Southern fare, including homemade pimento cheese, black eyed peas, giant & tender homegrown tomatoes, white sweet corn on the cob, and fried okra. My mother’s corn pone was tops, though.🙂
Plus it’s very huge and would be impossible to tear down
Don't give em any ideas
Plus we will never let it be torn down. 😏
When our children were growing up, we took a picnic every 4th of July to Stone Mountain for the laser light show and fireworks. The crowd would join in to sing Proud to be an American. And Elvis singing Dixie/Battle Hymn of the Republic. Beautiful! Great times! Phooey on political correctness! I’m proud to be American and Southern!
Great pic.
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