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Black America Web
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Black America Web
Confederate Group Sues Georgia Over Changes To Stone Mountain Confederate Monument
Source: DANIEL SLIM / Getty I will never understand the intellectual dishonesty of white people who still celebrate the Confederacy. The whole reason the American Civil War was fought was because the Confederacy felt entitled to their slaves, yet those who still celebrate the Confederacy get all apoplectic when that fact is brought up. This is what's currently happening in Georgia, where the Sons of Confederate Veterans have filed a lawsuit against the state over adding an exhibit that addresses the history of slavery, segregation, and the Ku Klux Klan to the Stone Mountain Confederate monument. According to AP News, the lawsuit is over the carving in Georgia's Stone Mountain depicting Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Gen. Robert E. Lee, and Thomas 'Stonewall' Jackson on horseback. In 2021, the Stone Mountain Memorial Association voted to relocate Confederate flags at the monument and to build an exhibit informing how the monument contributed to the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan and the role segregation played in its creation. So obviously, the Sons of Confederate Veterans had an issue with the Confederate monument being honest about the Confederacy. The group believes that the removal of the flags from the Stone Mountain Confederate monument is a violation of Georgia law. 'When they come after the history and attempt to change everything to the present political structure, that's against the law,' Martin O'Toole, the chapter's spokesperson, told AP. Bro, they're not coming after the history, they're finally being honest about it. The Confederacy waged and lost a war against their own country because they couldn't stand the idea of Black people having the same freedoms as white folks. You can't be mad that this glorified participation trophy is truthful about the cause it was dedicated to. The United Daughters of the Confederacy commissioned the Stone Mountain Confederate monument in 1915. The carving was done by Gutzon Borglum, the same man who later went on to carve Mount Rushmore. The monument, along with the release of the 1915 film Birth of a Nation , were integral to the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan, to the point that the Klan burned a cross on top of the Confederate monument on Thanksgiving night that same year. Source: DANIEL SLIM / Getty Birmingham-based Warner Museums, which specializes in civil rights installations, was hired by the Stone Mountain Memorial Association to build the new exhibit. '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. The removal of flags is probably not the main reason the Sons of the Confederate Veterans are big mad about the exhibit. One of the planned parts of the exhibit addresses how both the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans helped perpetuate the 'Lost Cause' ideology and contributed to segregation efforts throughout the South. With that context, this whole lawsuit can't help but feel like the legal equivalent of the 'Wait. Is this f-ing play about us?' meme. Over the last decade, Confederate monuments have become a source of great debate. Last year a poll unsurprisingly found that the majority of white people think Confederate monuments should stay up. There have been efforts across the country to preserve Confederate monuments, including a bill that was passed in Florida last year that aims to preserve the monuments in order to 'protect white society.' No matter how hard Confederacy stans try to convince everyone that their 'rebel pride' is not about racism, the truth always manages to reveal itself. SEE ALSO: Poll: White Americans Support Protecting Confederate Legacy Anti-DEI Alabama Celebrates President Of The Confederacy's Birthday SEE ALSO Confederate Group Sues Georgia Over Changes To Stone Mountain Confederate Monument was originally published on
San Francisco Chronicle
03-07-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
Confederacy group sues Georgia park for planning an exhibit on slavery and segregation
STONE MOUNTAIN, Ga. (AP) — The Georgia chapter of a Confederacy group filed a lawsuit this week against a state park with the largest Confederate monument in the country, arguing officials broke state law by planning an exhibit on ties to slavery, segregation and white supremacy. 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 Georgia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans also alleges in the lawsuit filed Tuesday that the board's decision to relocate Confederate flags from a walking trail violates Georgia law. '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. Stone Mountain Park markets itself as a family theme park and is a popular hiking spot east of Atlanta. Completed in 1972, the monument on the mountain's northern space is 190 feet (58 meters) across and 90 feet (27 meters) tall. The United Daughters of the Confederacy hired sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who later carved Mount Rushmore, to craft the carving in 1915. That same year, the film 'Birth of a Nation' celebrated the Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan, which marked its comeback with a cross burning on top of Stone Mountain on Thanksgiving night in 1915. One of the 10 parts of the planned exhibit would expound on the Ku Klux's Klan reemergence and the movie's influence on the mountain's monument. 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. 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. 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 exhibit would 'radically revise' the park's setup, 'completely changing the emphasis of the Park and its purpose as defined by the law of the State of Georgia,' the lawsuit says. ___
Winnipeg Free Press
03-07-2025
- Politics
- Winnipeg Free Press
Confederacy group sues Georgia park for planning an exhibit on slavery and segregation
STONE MOUNTAIN, Ga. (AP) — The Georgia chapter of a Confederacy group filed a lawsuit this week against a state park with the largest Confederate monument in the country, arguing officials broke state law by planning an exhibit on ties to slavery, segregation and white supremacy. 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 Georgia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans also alleges in the lawsuit filed Tuesday that the board's decision to relocate Confederate flags from a walking trail violates Georgia law. '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. Stone Mountain Park markets itself as a family theme park and is a popular hiking spot east of Atlanta. Completed in 1972, the monument on the mountain's northern space is 190 feet (58 meters) across and 90 feet (27 meters) tall. The United Daughters of the Confederacy hired sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who later carved Mount Rushmore, to craft the carving in 1915. That same year, the film 'Birth of a Nation' celebrated the Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan, which marked its comeback with a cross burning on top of Stone Mountain on Thanksgiving night in 1915. One of the 10 parts of the planned exhibit would expound on the Ku Klux's Klan reemergence and the movie's influence on the mountain's monument. 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. 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. 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. Sons of the Confederate Veterans members have defended the carvings as honoring Confederate soldiers. The exhibit would 'radically revise' the park's setup, 'completely changing the emphasis of the Park and its purpose as defined by the law of the State of Georgia,' the lawsuit says. ___ Kramon is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Kramon on X: @charlottekramon.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
The Burning of Nottoway Plantation
Firefighters from Baton Rouge battle a blaze as flames burst from the roof of the Nottoway Plantation in White Castle, La., on Thursday, May 15, 2025. Credit - Michael Johnson—The Advocate/AP Years ago, I was having a long lunch with a group of graduate school classmates at one of the most legendary restaurants in New Orleans' French Quarter. Memorabilia hung on the walls nearby and inside rooms. While I enjoyed my gumbo, I noticed my friends kept looking over my shoulder. The paintings, old menus, and other objects told the story of a mythical south where happily enslaved people worked at the beck and call of the kindly landed class. I had seen these images my whole life, so I was desensitized to them. But my friends who were from other countries like Canada and South Korea lost their appetites. Louisiana, like much of the rest of the South, is dotted with former plantations. But on May 15, 2025, the largest surviving plantation mansion of them all burned to the ground, reportedly due to an electrical fire. All that's left is a portion of the façade. All else is ashes. Nottoway, like many plantations, took on a second life as a location for weddings and portrait taking. As of this writing, the website labels Nottoway as a 'resort' with amenities such as a gym, pool, and tennis courts. The history tab of Nottoway's website provides a detailed listing of the diameters of certain oak trees—but nothing about the history of the plantation, how it was built, or what went on there. Many people, myself included, see the Nottoway Plantation as little more than a former slave labor camp. A place where crimes against humanity went unpunished and many affiliated with those crimes were treated as noble heroes. John C. Calhoun, Vice President under Andrew Jackson, often argued that slavery was good for America because it created prosperity for those who were meant to rule. Slavery was lucrative for people like Calhoun. By 1863, many of the wealthiest Americans were from the so-called 'planter class' i.e. plantation owners. Calhoun also had the audacity to say that slavery was good for the enslaved because it provided them with food and shelter, which they weren't able to provide for themselves. Movies like Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind brought this propaganda into the 20th century by showing plantations as sites of human flourishing where the best people lived the good life and the enslaved were beloved members of the family. In the later film, Scarlett O'Hara had pretty dresses, more suitors than she could handle, and an enslaved caretaker who gave her motherly advice. But these depictions, as we know, were fantasies. No classic Hollywood film tells the story of plantation life from the point of view of the enslaved—that would have dispelled the myth entirely. Such films did not show how enslaved families felt being forced to increase the wealth of others and as their family members were sold off to other slave labor camps. There is no question, the enslaved workers at the Nottoway Plantation during the antebellum era were human chattel. They were unpaid and unable to leave. They had no property rights, no rights to their own children, and no rights to their own bodies. Nor could they appeal to the legal system for justice even if they or a loved one had been assaulted, raped, or killed. The question at hand: how do we treat the physical locations of such heinous histories? In Amsterdam, a short walk from the Rijksmuseum and a park full of blossoming tulips, sits the Anne Frank House. Anne Frank, of course, was the young woman who hid with her family from Nazi's in the attic of this home. Eventually, she was captured and murdered. And there are the two 'Doors of No Return' along the western coast of Africa. These memorials in Senegal and Benin mark the locations where Africans were shipped away from their homelands into chattel slavery. In 2023, I visited the Doorway of No Return at the House of Slaves on Gorée Island in Senegal, where expert tour guides gave detailed lectures about the deprivation experienced by humans held in the building. (Some people were kept in the space under the stairwells, an area no larger than a doghouse.) With this context, it was impossible not to be moved at the end of the tour where the guide cleared the way for me to stand at the threshold of the doorway. There were no tennis courts or facials offered at the House of Slaves. Between 2017 and 2022, I visited Amsterdam three times on research trips. I tried to go to the Anne Frank House repeatedly, but each time I arrived, the line of people queued up to bear witness to what happened there was down the block and around the corner. By all accounts, seeing the interior of the home is a moving experience. Herein lies the problem with America's attitudes towards its former slave labor camps: they are divisive because they ignore their own histories. While there are some plantations that attempt to provide context for their past (the Whitney Plantation in Wallace, Louisiana is an excellent example), there are far too many former plantations where the guides offer revisionist histories designed to make visitors feel unbothered by what happened there. This is especially damaging when many visitors believe they are taking an educational tour. Most people would not want to take glamour shots at the site of a human catastrophe. Most people would be appalled if someone threw a party in the place where their great great grandmother was imprisoned and abused. Any attempt to turn the World Trade Center site into a vacation resort would likely be met with widespread resistance from Americans. This is because the past must be contended with. Reconciliation cannot come before recognition and mourning. If Nottoway Plantation had been serving the community it was based in, I'd be the first one devastated by its loss. But as it stands, my face is completely dry. Contact us at letters@
Time Magazine
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Time Magazine
The Burning of Nottoway Plantation
Years ago, I was having a long lunch with a group of graduate school classmates at one of the most legendary restaurants in New Orleans' French Quarter. Memorabilia hung on the walls nearby and inside rooms. While I enjoyed my gumbo, I noticed my friends kept looking over my shoulder. The paintings, old menus, and other objects told the story of a mythical south where happily enslaved people worked at the beck and call of the kindly landed class. I had seen these images my whole life, so I was desensitized to them. But my friends who were from other countries like Canada and South Korea lost their appetites. Louisiana, like much of the rest of the South, is dotted with former plantations. But on May 15, 2025, the largest surviving plantation mansion of them all burned to the ground, reportedly due to an electrical fire. All that's left is a portion of the façade. All else is ashes. Nottoway, like many plantations, took on a second life as a location for weddings and portrait taking. As of this writing, the website labels Nottoway as a 'resort' with amenities such as a gym, pool, and tennis courts. The history tab of Nottoway's website provides a detailed listing of the diameters of certain oak trees—but nothing about the history of the plantation, how it was built, or what went on there. Many people, myself included, see the Nottoway Plantation as little more than a former slave labor camp. A place where crimes against humanity went unpunished and many affiliated with those crimes were treated as noble heroes. John C. Calhoun, Vice President under Andrew Jackson, often argued that slavery was good for America because it created prosperity for those who were meant to rule. Slavery was lucrative for people like Calhoun. By 1863, many of the wealthiest Americans were from the so-called ' planter class ' i.e. plantation owners. Calhoun also had the audacity to say that slavery was good for the enslaved because it provided them with food and shelter, which they weren't able to provide for themselves. Movies like Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind brought this propaganda into the 20 th century by showing plantations as sites of human flourishing where the best people lived the good life and the enslaved were beloved members of the family. In the later film, Scarlett O'Hara had pretty dresses, more suitors than she could handle, and an enslaved caretaker who gave her motherly advice. But these depictions, as we know, were fantasies. No classic Hollywood film tells the story of plantation life from the point of view of the enslaved—that would have dispelled the myth entirely. Such films did not show how enslaved families felt being forced to increase the wealth of others and as their family members were sold off to other slave labor camps. There is no question, the enslaved workers at the Nottoway Plantation during the antebellum era were human chattel. They were unpaid and unable to leave. They had no property rights, no rights to their own children, and no rights to their own bodies. Nor could they appeal to the legal system for justice even if they or a loved one had been assaulted, raped, or killed. The question at hand: how do we treat the physical locations of such heinous histories? In Amsterdam, a short walk from the Rijksmuseum and a park full of blossoming tulips, sits the Anne Frank House. Anne Frank, of course, was the young woman who hid with her family from Nazi's in the attic of this home. Eventually, she was captured and murdered. And there are the two 'Doors of No Return' along the western coast of Africa. These memorials in Senegal and Benin mark the locations where Africans were shipped away from their homelands into chattel slavery. In 2023, I visited the Doorway of No Return at the House of Slaves on Gorée Island in Senegal, where expert tour guides gave detailed lectures about the deprivation experienced by humans held in the building. (Some people were kept in the space under the stairwells, an area no larger than a doghouse.) With this context, it was impossible not to be moved at the end of the tour where the guide cleared the way for me to stand at the threshold of the doorway. There were no tennis courts or facials offered at the House of Slaves. Between 2017 and 2022, I visited Amsterdam three times on research trips. I tried to go to the Anne Frank House repeatedly, but each time I arrived, the line of people queued up to bear witness to what happened there was down the block and around the corner. By all accounts, seeing the interior of the home is a moving experience. Herein lies the problem with America's attitudes towards its former slave labor camps: they are divisive because they ignore their own histories. While there are some plantations that attempt to provide context for their past (the Whitney Plantation in Wallace, Louisiana is an excellent example), there are far too many former plantations where the guides offer revisionist histories designed to make visitors feel unbothered by what happened there. This is especially damaging when many visitors believe they are taking an educational tour. Most people would not want to take glamour shots at the site of a human catastrophe. Most people would be appalled if someone threw a party in the place where their great great grandmother was imprisoned and abused. Any attempt to turn the World Trade Center site into a vacation resort would likely be met with widespread resistance from Americans. This is because the past must be contended with. Reconciliation cannot come before recognition and mourning. If Nottoway Plantation had been serving the community it was based in, I'd be the first one devastated by its loss. But as it stands, my face is completely dry.
