A Confederate history organization in Georgia is suing Stone Mountain Park, accusing officials there of breaking state law by making plans for an exhibit that teaches about the monument’s past connections to white supremacists and segregation.

The Associated Press reports the Georgia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans says the Stone Mountain Memorial Association, which manages Stone Mountain Park, is illegal because of its 2021 decision to relocate Confederate flags from a walking trail at the monument.

The lawsuit claims that what is planned is “clearly outside of the legislative mandate and legal responsibilities of the State of Georgia acting through the Stone Mountain Memorial Association.”

Stone Mountain, located about 15 miles northeast of Atlanta, is a popular tourist location carved into rock. It depicts three highly revered figures in the segregationist South, Confederate president Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, towering 400 feet above the ground. First commissioned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, it is the largest Confederate monument in the nation and was carved by various sculptors between 1923 and 1972.. 

Changing sentiment about what the Confederacy has truly meant in American history led to the park association’s decision to have a “truth-telling” exhibit that speaks openly about how groups like the UDC and others were pro-segregationist and had ties to white supremacists.

In 2023, the Georgia General Assembly allocated $11 million to pay for some renovations to the park’s Memorial Hall and the new exhibit.

“We need to take down the flags. We need to change all the street names and do what we said we were going to do: eliminate the Confederacy from Stone Mountain Park,” former DeKalb County NAACP president John Evans told the Stone Mountain Memorial Association before the vote was taken, the AP wrote. But that was to the chagrin of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who say their ancestors were soldiers fighting against the Union army in the Civil War.

Historians point out, however, that the Civil War was fought as the result of numerous southern states seceding from the Union to preserve slavery. So the proposal for the exhibit is intended to point out that history.

“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 reads, according to the AP.

But for the Confederate history group, making changes to point out the racist history linked to Stone Mountain is an insult. “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, spokesperson for the Georgia chapter.

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