Confederacy group sues Stone Mountain Park for planning exhibit on slavery, segregation

STONE MOUNTAIN, Ga. - The Georgia chapter of a Confederacy group has filed a lawsuit against Stone Mountain Park, arguing officials broke state law by planning an exhibit on ties to slavery, segregation and white supremacy.

The Georgia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans also alleges in earlier court documents that the board’s decision to relocate Confederate flags from a walking trail violates Georgia law.

The backstory:

Stone Mountain’s massive carving depicts Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Gen. Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson on horseback. Critics who have long pushed for changes say the monument enshrines the "Lost Cause" mythology that romanticizes the Confederate cause as a state’s rights struggle, but state law protects the carving from any changes.

After police brutality spurred nationwide reckonings on racial inequality and the removal of dozens of Confederate monuments in 2020, the Stone Mountain Memorial Association, which oversees Stone Mountain Park, voted in 2021 to relocate Confederate flags and build a "truth-telling" exhibit to reflect the site’s role in the rebirth of the Klu Klux Klan, along with the carving’s segregationist roots.

The park’s board in 2021 also voted to change its logo from an image of the Confederate carveout to a lake inside the park.

The Stone Mountain Memorial Association hired Birmingham-based Warner Museums, which specializes in civil rights installations, to design the exhibit in 2022.

"The interpretive themes developed for Stone Mountain will explore how the collective memory created by Southerners in response to the real and imagined threats to the very foundation of Southern society, the institution of slavery, by westward expansion, a destructive war, and eventual military defeat, was fertile ground for the development of the Lost Cause movement amidst the social and economic disruptions that followed," the exhibit proposal says.

Other parts of the exhibit would address how the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans perpetuated the "Lost Cause" ideology through support for monuments, education programs and racial segregation laws across the South. It would also tell stories of a small Black community that lived near the mountain after the war.

What they're saying:

"When they come after the history and attempt to change everything to the present political structure, that’s against the law," said Martin O’Toole, the chapter’s spokesperson.

Sons of the Confederate Veterans members have defended the carvings as honoring Confederate soldiers.

The new exhibit would "completely repurpose the Stone Mountain Memorial Park" and "utterly ignore the purpose of the Georgia legislature in creating and maintaining" the park, the lawsuit says.

What's next:

Georgia’s General Assembly allocated $11 million in 2023 to pay for the exhibit and renovate the park’s Memorial Hall. The exhibit is not open yet. A spokesperson for the park did not immediately respond to a request for comment.