Time to honor Martin Luther King at Confederate memorial in Georgia?

Reporting from Atlanta —  Rarely do civil rights activists in the South object to monuments honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

So it was notable when the president of the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP spoke out against Georgia’s plan to erect a bell tower at the peak of Stone Mountain to commemorate the civil rights leader, who worked to unite America around the idea of equality for all.

The monument would loom above a vast 90-by-190 foot carving of three Confederate leaders on horseback, and just feet away from where Klansmen in white robes once burned crosses.

“It’s an insult to the legacy of Dr. King to put a tribute to him up there alongside those warmongers,” said Richard Rose, the Atlanta NAACP president. “The carving celebrates people who fought to maintain slavery. You can’t make hate more inclusive.”

So goes the latest tussle over Confederate imagery. Amid mounting scrutiny of such symbols, officials here are grappling with the thorny challenge of maintaining this hulking memorial that rises abruptly from Stone Mountain, a predominantly African American town on the eastern outskirts of Atlanta.

Although many Georgia residents, including civil rights leaders, support honoring King at the state-owned, privately organized park, some raise eyebrows over the mixed symbolism.

“This is like placing a statue of baseball legend Babe Ruth at the Football Hall of Fame,” complained one reader of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “One has absolutely nothing to do with the other.”

Stone Mountain was the site of the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan in 1915. For decades, the huge granite rock was owned by a Klan sympathizer who held KKK rallies there, until the state took over the land to create a 3,200-acre recreational park in 1958.

Five years later, King included Stone Mountain in his “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. “Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia,” he said.

African American activists have long called for the row of Confederate flags at the base of the mountain to be taken down.

After a shooting in June that claimed the lives of nine parishioners at a historic black church in Charleston, S.C., the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP went further, calling for the giant sculpture of Confederacy President Jefferson Davis and Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson to be sandblasted. The suspect in the slayings, an avowed white supremacist, had posed for photos with a Confederate flag.

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The carving itself took nearly half a century to complete. In 1923, the sculptor Gutzon Borglum began work on the project for the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Yet Borglum soon quit after a disagreement, and the carving was abandoned for nearly three decades, until the State of Georgia formed the Stone Mountain Memorial Assn. to oversee the monument’s completion.

The park, which encompasses hiking and biking trails, a lake and an 18-hole golf course, as well as the historic monuments and memorials, is Georgia’s most visited destination.

The proposed monument to King, along with a new museum exhibit that would recognize the contributions and sacrifices of African American soldiers in both the Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War, represents Georgia’s effort to respond to criticisms of its celebration of Confederate history and the mountain’s complicated legacy of racism.

“We are about additions, not subtraction,” Bill Stephens, the CEO of the Stone Mountain Memorial Assn., said in a statement. The new exhibits, he said, would “simply broaden the stories and history shared within” Stone Mountain Park.

Many African Americans oppose the idea of destroying the carving, and some celebrate the King sculpture as a welcome step forward in Southern race relations.

“I think it is a good idea, introducing a new era to the Deep South,” the Rev. Joseph Lowery, a civil rights activist who worked alongside King, said in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “They are placing Martin Luther King in a place where he ought to be. Where I never dreamed he would be. This is striking.”

U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson, an African American who represents Georgia’s 4th District, also applauded state officials for being “forward thinking” in recognizing the need for a “more inclusive history” at Stone Mountain. “It’s the right thing to do,” he said in an email.

But the plans have also raised indignation too.

In a statement, the Georgia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans branded the proposal to erect a monument to King “an inappropriate and disrespectful act, repugnant to Christian people,” as well as a “possible violation” of the state law that established the Stone Mountain Memorial Assn. to promote the mountain as a memorial to the Confederacy.

State Sen. Vincent Fort, who is African American, also opposes the idea, but for different reasons.

“What it does is it creates a false equivalency between Dr. King and these slave-owning traitors,” Fort said. “Having those Confederate emblems on Stone Mountain is like stabbing African Americans in the back. Putting on another a monument to Dr. King is like pulling the knife out, but only half way out. The knife is still in your back.”

Gradually, over the years, Stone Mountain officials have downplayed references to the Civil War. Park gift stores have removed the rebel battle flag from playing cards and children’s jigsaw puzzles. The Confederate Hall museum, which once displayed 1800s military artifacts, now focuses on the mountain’s geology.

The once unabashed celebration of Confederate pride, the Stone Mountain Lasershow Spectacular, a nightly summertime light show that projects digital lasers on the rock face, now superimposes an image of King over the carving of Jackson, Davis and Lee.

State Rep. LaDawn Jones, an African American who called for a largely unsuccessful Fourth of July boycott of the park, said she would continue to campaign for the Confederate battle flags to come down, but does not oppose the plan to memorialize King. Many African Americans, she noted, continue to visit the park.

“If they’re not concerned, maybe this is a symbol of progress,” she said. “This decision is in line with the current climate of Georgia. I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing — if Georgia is behind the times or if it’s just slowly coming to terms with its history.”

Either way, she said, memorials evolve. “This monument will continue to change for generations.”

Jarvie is a special correspondent.

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