Labels

Search This Blog

Friday, April 29, 2016

Stone Mountain Revisited

Barely a week after we moved into our home in Sandy Springs, Georgia, the Weekend edition of the Atlanta Free Press arrived at our doorstep.  Tucked within its pages was a full-page ad for a Scottish festival at Stone Mountain. In oversized letters, the ad's banner read:" Meet Your Clan Members Here   ." The “C” vs. “K” notwithstanding, I found the invitation startling. 

You may recall the reference to Stone Mountain in Martin Luther King Jr.’s renowned “I Have a Dream” speech: “Let freedom ring from the Stone Mountain of Georgia.” King’s reference alluded to the November 1915 Stone Mountain gathering of the hooded charter members of the Ku Klux Klan to create a new iteration of the Klan.  
Stone Mountain is now carved with the largest bas-relief in the world depicting the three key Confederate figures during the Civil War: Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis.I find this quotation by Jefferson Davis to be especially revealing:

The slaves in their present condition in the South are comfortable and happy; they see them advancing in intelligence; they see the kindest relations existing between them and their masters; they see them provided for in age and sickness, in infancy and in disability; they see them in useful employment, restrained from the vicious indulgences to which their inferior nature inclines them.
“Meet your Clan Members Here” and “Meet your Klan Members Here” seem to overlap with far too much ease in the South. Our comfortable suburban lifestyle overlays a history of profound evil. I am reminded of a line from a Yehuda Amichai poem: “And already the demons of my past are meeting with the demons of my future.”  My sense is that, in the south, the demons of the past have not yet been expunged, truly recognized or, for that matter, accounted for as demons.
I am intrigued that, just this year, the state holidays Confederate Memorial Day and Robert E. Lee’s birthday have both been struck from the Georgia State calendar and quietly replaced by the generic term “State Holiday.” In commenting about the change in holiday designation, Brian Robinson, a spokesperson for Georgia Governor Nathan Deal, said the state still intends to celebrate the days even if it doesn’t “spell it out by name.” “There will be a state holiday on that day,” he said. “Those so inclined can observe Confederate Memorial Day.”  It is hard not to hear a coy concession to political correctness in his remarks.  Tim Pilgrim, a leader of the Georgia division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, said he was concerned about the shift. “We don’t want Georgia to turn its back on history,” he said. “They can’t erase and remove our history. That’s unacceptable for us.”[2]  Precisely my point.
One would be wrong to draw broad generalizations about the South and Southerners, where, as in any region, you will find the best and worst of us.  I have been so fortunate to meet people of extraordinary kindness and warmth here. 
Additionally, racism in our nation or the history of prejudice and social and economic injustice is not unique to the South. The frightening release of racial hatred during this presidential primary season speaks of the unfinished business of collective nation building required in our country.  In these past months we have witnessed the frightening exposure and embracing of our inner demons along with the concurrent subjugation of our better angels.
Stone Mountain represents a striking and frightening metaphor for the normalization and glorification of hatred and racism that is so enmeshed in the history, culture, consciousness and sub-consciousness of the South, and more broadly, our nation. Approximately 260,000 travelers from across our nation and around the world fly in an out of Atlanta each day[3].  Most of them will spot Stone Mountain as they approach or leave Hartsfield-Jackson Airport.  What will they see? What will they think about?  Will they see a glorification of an age marked by profound moral evils or will they think about man’s inhumanity to man and commit themselves to ensuring that the demons of our past do not also represent the demons of our future?




[1] https://www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf
[2] http://www.ajc.com/news/news/confederate-holidays-booted-from-state-calendar/nnFFF/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartsfield%E2%80%93Jackson_Atlanta_International_Airport

No comments:

Post a Comment