Georgia, can we talk about Stone Mountain and the racist eyesore upon its face?

[Goodheart]

What's to do be done about that?

[NurseJackie]

1. It's ugly. It will always be a visible scar that mars the natural beauty.

[jimfields33]

2. That will take a tremendous amount of work to destroy

It might be easier to change it somehow. Drill or scrape to something else.

[ProfessorGAC]

3. Call David Copperfield?

Maybe he can make it disappear. Which would be a good thing.

[Sneederbunk]

4. One half of Mt. Rushmore must go?

[Goodheart]

7. Er, no. Washington and Jefferson made actual indispensable contributions to this country.

Can't say the same for any of those traitors chiseled onto Stone Mountain.

[RockRaven]

5. Maybe add a blindfold on each of them and put a firing squad off to the left?

[dawg]

6. Something needs to be done, but I'm not sure what.

With statues, it's easy. Take 'em down and move them to a museum where they belong. But you can't move Stone Mountain. And lots of people in Georgia are resistant to the idea just sandblasting the damned thing.

It'd be a pretty cool sculpture and attraction if only it were of different people (and horses).

[dsc]

29. Don't blame the horses they didn't do anything

[Solly Mack]

8. There are so many famous Georgians to use instead.

Jackie Robinson, MLK, Jr., Alice Walker, Flannery O'Connor, DeForest Kelley, Jimmy Carter...to name a few.

[dawg]

13. You know, that could be really cool.

Turn it into a sort of Georgia Mt. Rushmore. None of those guys currently on the side of the mountain are Georgians.

The ones you named are good candidates, especially President Carter and MLK, Jr. (as much as I love Star Trek ...). I would also add James Oglethorpe, founder of the Georgia colony.

It would be wicked expensive, though, to do it right.

[Solly Mack]

22. Exactly. Lyman Hall, Button Gwinnett, Geo. Walton

But I think it should include the arts as well. All inclusive from various fields.

Very expensive. Cheaper just to get rid of the hot mess already up there.

[MuseRider]

23. What a great idea!

Surely someone could figure out how to do that? Well, maybe not but I really like your choice of people.

[Solly Mack]

25. The mountain used to be inhabited by Creek and Cherokee

peoples.

So much history that need not include the lie of the "lost cause" bullshit.

[MuseRider]

27. I did not know that

but I am certainly not surprised. What a disgrace to and robbery of a wonderful people. I find myself constantly at a loss for words.

[struggle4progress]

9. Add Outkast!

... “If nothing else — and this is easy to say as a white dude — it’s a monumental engineering and artistic feat, to have this humongous carving on a mountainside. I told a friend, ‘Why don’t we just add OutKast to kind of balance it out?’ Everyone loves OutKast” ...
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/09/11/putting-outkast-on-a-confederate-monument

... it's important to recognize the history and heritage of all Georgians ... By no means do we wish to erase or destroy the current carving ... We simply wish to add new carvings, of Atlanta hip-hop duo Outkast ... There's plenty of room ...
https://sign.moveon.org/petitions/georgia-add-outkast-to

[Goodheart]

11. Hey, ya!

[Ohiogal]

10. Whoever thought that was a good idea?

God, it’s ugly!

[Goodheart]

18. The entire park is even tackier than THAT.

Stone Mountain was purchased in 1958 by the State of Georgia to serve as a monument to the Confederacy. And the State had the crassness to officially open the park on the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's assassination.

[ornotna]

12. Not sure anything can be done

I'm not 100% positive but isn't Stone Mountain privately owned?

[Goodheart]

15. State-owned since 1958, according to Wikipedia.

[Hoyt]

16. No longer. At one time it was owned by an honest to god KKK Grand "Wizard."

[Thomas Hurt]

14. Change it to Trump's face then people can come and throw shit at it. They could charge.

[safeinOhio]

32. Change, or add to it

Sherman.

[sanatanadharma]

17. Flatten the bas relief and polish the rock

Looks like a possible giant screen for movie projections, complete with a vast lawn for viewers to sit and picnic

[Goodheart]

20. I've actually gone to laser light shows on that very lawn, against that very face.

And those were utterly COOL as shit.

I'm with you, 100%.

[dhill926]

19. I've never really seen it in context before....

good god it's ugly....

[Hoyt]

21. Have long advocated sandblasting that carving. I thought a few years ago

the state was going to put a MLK statue on top, but don’t believe it has happened.

[GoCubsGo]

28. I'd like to see them restore it to the orignal rock face.

Surely, here is a way to cover it up so that the mountain looks like it did before it was defaced. If not, I'd rather see them sandblast "Traitors" above it.

[hunter]

24. I'll bet people would pay to shoot big stones at it using Trebuchets and Air Cannons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trebuchet

Replica Civil War Cannons could be used on the Fourth of July for everyone who enjoys the traditional holiday noise and smell of gunpowder.

Eventually this abomination would be eroded away by the continuous assault leaving a natural looking surface.

[Nevilledog]

26. Nothing that a big black Sharpie couldn't fix.

A moustache here, some devil horns there.

[kimbutgar]

30. In 1994 I went to Atlanta to attend my Dad's military reunion for black veterans

Never had been to the south before and the day after the convention we had a free day so we asked the concierge what would be a good place to go. He suggested Stone Mountain. We rented a car and drove out there. I never knew the history of that mountain. Anyway we took the tram up and this guy on the tram kept saying this is a monument or the greatness of whites people And white power ! I am a light skinned black woman married to a white man and our son was almost 3 in his stroller. I turned away from that guy not wanting him to see the fear in my heart and eyes. He had no idea what I was. We got to the top and I was off that tram so quickly I told my husband to deal with our son in the stroller. Once up there it was a striking view but very hot and we didn’t stay up there long. But I noticed there were only white people up there. It hit me all of a sudden this was a monument to the confederacy. And we left and went back down. I grew up in San Francisco and honestly was not a history buff then. I brought a souvenir kitchen coaster with my name on it that had Stone Mountain engraved on it. To this day I have it in my kitchen and chuckle.

But that guy saying white power will always stay in my memory.

[Hoyt]

35. Have not been there in decades, although it is a good place to hike, for that very reason.

It’s a monument to the confederacy/hatred. Up until the late 50s, it was owned by a Georgia klan leader. Klan rallies were held there well into the 90s. It is just a creepy, ugly place.

Sorry that you were subjected to that. From what I’ve read, you probably wouldn’t hear that talk these days, but it’s still creepy, I’m sure.

[Chainfire]

31. As a practical matter, where do we stop? It is not as simple as we would have it

How far do we go with removing references to our evil past? Should we also remove the monuments to all Americans who, at any time in their lives, held slaves?

Should we remove monuments for those who participated in the wars against Native Americans? Andrew Jackson slaughtered and relocated whole tribes, man, woman and child, his actions were the very definition of genocide, yet damn near every town in the nation with more than two streets, has a Jackson Street. Should we bust up the statue in Jackson Square?

We have a monument to the airplane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan, incinerating thousands of civilians, should we be proud of that? In Europe, during WWII we used terror bombings against civilians and intentionally destroyed cultural sites that had no military value. (Dresden, Monte Casino for starts) We killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in Vietnam in and unjust war that only benefited the defense industry; should we tear down that wall too? The Catholic Church is directly responsible for the deaths of untold numbers of native populations on their crusades to convert native populations; I find their actions to be highly offensive, should we bulldoze cathedrals?

The Confederacy is not something to be publicly celebrated, and I do not celebrate it, but it is certainly not our only sinful legacy. I think that it is not very sincere to only go after that single issue, unless the same logic that applies to the Confederacy should also apply to other historical events and individuals. No matter how many sites we destroy, it does not change, nor excuse the past, and it does not help us hide from the past. Perhaps we should have to look at the monuments every day to remind of us of how easy it is to for a society go off the moral rails in the name of patriotism and nationalism.

As a people we damned the Muslim fanatics who blew up thousand year old World Heritage Sites, in Iraq and Syria, that their religious leaders interpreted to heretical. Is it a similar situation? If we decide, as a nation, that we want to blow up the face of Stone Mountain, so be it, it is no skin off my teeth, I don't care if we pull down statues of Lee or plow under Confederate cemeteries and replace them with Wal-Marts. But we need to consider and understand what we are doing and why from a historical perspective.

[JHB]

33. We can make a clear distinction between the people who helped build the country...

...and those who worked to tear it apart.

[SeattleVet]

34. It's a complicated mess, with various groups and laws involved.

Good article from The Guardian 5 years ago that goes into some depth of the history and why it's now so completely entrenched:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/28/stone-mountain-confederate-monument-racial-tension