While growing up in Atlanta, a popular summertime, nighttime outing for families was to visit Stone Mountain to watch a laser show where various artistic renderings, accompanied by music, were projected onto the Civil War monument carved into the side of the mountain. The show’s finale and biggest crowd pleaser were renderings glorifying the Confederacy accompanied by Elvis Presley’s versions of Dixieland and Battle Hymn of the Republic.
As an apolitical teenager/college-student of the 70s and 80s, this monument and laser/musical tributes to it made me uncomfortable, despite the joy and pride that it seemed to bring to so many of my family and friends. The argument that the carving wasn’t racist, despite its history, struck me as weak tea.
Over time, I concluded that maintaining this carving is just wrong. Even after the horrific deaths of Trayvon Martin and so many others, after nine black people were murdered in a church in Charleston, SC, and after the neo-Confederate rallies in Charlottesville, VA to protest the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue, this monument to white supremacy endures.
It’s time to erase the carving of Confederate leaders Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson off the side of that rock. This won’t be easy to accomplish. In the meantime, the State should commission a crew to paint the words, “Black Lives Matter!” over the carving.
It’s time. Hell, it’s long past time.