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Stone Mountain
Stone Mountain, located in DeKalb County about ten miles northeast of downtown Atlanta, is the largest
exposed mass of granite in the world. A town at the base of the mountain bears the same name. Before 1800, Native Americans used the mountain as
a meeting and ceremonial place. Stone Mountain emerged as a major tourist resort in the 1850s, attracting residents of nearby
Atlanta and other cities. The carving of a Confederate memorial on the side of the mountain attracted national and international
attention during the twentieth century. Today, Stone Mountain is a tourist attraction that draws approximately 4 million visitors
a year.
Native Americans were the first humans to visit Stone Mountain about 9,000 years ago. In the late seventeenth century Europeans,
probably English traders and slave raiders, journeyed to Stone Mountain. Disease followed these Europeans to central Georgia,
killing thousands of Native Americans. In response to the threat posed by contact with whites, surviving indigenous tribes
made alliances with one another during the late eighteenth century. These alliances became known as the Creek Confederation. Although Stone Mountain lay between the Creek Confederation and the Cherokees, it became an important meeting place, because two major trails connected it to the eastern part of the state. European settlers
also increasingly moved into the region during the early nineteenth century.
The
1821 Treaty of Indian Springs opened settlement for European Americans. These whites settled the base of Stone Mountain in
the late 1820s. The town was officially named Stone Mountain in 1847. The building of railroads in the 1830s and 1840s allowed local farmers to participate in the larger market economy. It also connected residents from
newly settled Atlanta and other cities such as Augusta to Stone Mountain. By 1850 urbanites increasingly visited Stone Mountain, admiring its natural scenery, fine hotels, and
man-made attractions.
Quarrying was another business that benefited from railroads in the nineteenth century. Stone Mountain granite was desirable
for use as building stone. The railroad made it easy for entrepreneurs to transport this granite to larger markets. Unfortunately,
quarrying destroyed several spectacular geological features on Stone Mountain, such as the Devil's Crossroads, which was located
on top of the mountain.
Two
events brought Stone Mountain attention during the twentieth century: the founding of the second Ku Klux Klan (KKK) there in 1915 and the struggle to complete the Confederate memorial. Inspired by D. W. Griffith's silent film Birth of a Nation (which romanticized the earlier heyday of the Klan), William Simmons, a minister and organizer for fraternal associations,
planned the induction ceremonies that awakened the KKK from its slumber of forty years to take place a week before the movie's
opening in Atlanta. In 1914 the leader of the Atlanta chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), Caroline Helen Jemison Plane, and the Stone Mountain Memorial Association had decided to carve a memorial on the side
of Stone Mountain. Simmons may have selected Stone Mountain as the location of the ceremonies because of the planned memorial.
Even
more than the birth of the second KKK, the Confederate memorial gave Stone Mountain notoriety throughout the twentieth century.
A product of the Lost Cause era, the memorial was originally conceived as a symbol of the white South. In 1916 the recently incorporated Stone Mountain
Confederate Monumental Association (SMCMA) hired the renowned sculptor Gutzon Borglum, a northerner, to carve Robert E. Lee
leading his Confederate troops across the mountain's summit. These whites hoped that the memorial would serve as a symbol
of sectional reconciliation. World War I (1917-18) delayed the project until 1923. Then, in 1925, with only the head of Lee carved, a growing rift between the sculptor
and the SMCMA over artistic control ended with the association firing Borglum, thereby halting construction. With the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Confederate memorial remained unfinished. In 1941 Governor Eugene Talmadge formed the Stone Mountain Memorial Association to continue work on the memorial, but the project was delayed once again by
the U.S. entry into World War II (1941-45).
It was not until the
1950s that interest in (and funding for) the completion of the Confederate memorial was revived. As the civil rights movement gained momentum, segregationists hoped that the memorial would serve as a reminder of white supremacy. According to historian
Grace Elizabeth Hale, "The rising tide of African-American activism in the wake of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision reignited broad interest in Confederate symbols as many white southerners fired up for 'battle' with
the nation again." In 1958 the state of Georgia purchased Stone Mountain, making it a state park, and Governor Marvin Griffin signed legislation to establish the Stone Mountain Memorial Association (SMMA) as a state authority. The state and SMMA agreed
to carve the images of Confederate icons Robert E. Lee, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, and Jefferson Davis on the mountain and
to construct a plaza at its base. In 1970 planners dedicated the memorial, and an estimated 10,000 visitors came to witness
its unveiling.
Since
the 1980s Stone Mountain has remained a tourist attraction, although many groups denounce the memorial as racist. Millions
of tourists from around the world marvel at the natural scenery. The park has increased visitation by promoting such special
events as the Yellow Daisy Festival, the Highland Games, and the Easter Sunrise services. Other attractions include a reconstructed
antebellum plantation built in the 1960s, a skylift, a waterside complex, and a thirty-six-hole golf course. In 1996 Stone
Mountain provided venues for three Olympic Games events: archery, tennis, and cycling. The most popular attraction in the park is the laser show. This show now symbolizes
the promise of a New South, imposing other southern faces, including that of Martin Luther King Jr., over the Confederate icons.
Suggested Reading David B. Freeman, Carved in Stone: The History of Stone Mountain (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1997).
Grace Elizabeth Hale, "Granite Stopped Time: The Stone Mountain Memorial and the Representation of White Southern Identity,"
Georgia Historical Quarterly 82 (spring 1998): 22-44.
Paul Stephen Hudson and Melora P. Mirza, Atlanta's Stone Mountain: A Multicultural History (Charleston, S.C.: History Press, 2011).
Nancy MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
Bruce E. Stewart, University of Georgia
Updated 8/10/2009
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