The city of Stone Mountain , whose 6,000 residents live in the shadows of the great granite monument, sits in vivid contrast to the gray monolith it is named after.
Three of four residents in the town where the Ku Klux Klan was reborn are black, and the town elected its first black mayor in 1997. That man, the late Chuck Burris, memorably anointed himself "the black dragon" upon his victory.
The residents who operate many of the shops and restaurants that make up the town’s business district are mixed over the renewed attention aimed at the landmark in their midst. Some take a live-and-let-live approach, noting the attraction has helped fuel their livelihoods; others are furious it has taken this long for a renewed debate over the mountain's message.
Vivette Baker, a 57-year-old Jamaican native who runs a beauty store a short walk from Stone Mountain Park, counts herself in that first group. She recalled watching an old white man draped in a Rebel flag walking, proudly, through an all-black neighborhood in town the other day.
Of Saturday's raucous Confederate flag rally outside the monument, which our AJC colleague Chris Joyner covered in today's premium editions, she offered just a shrug.
“Don’t you just love America?” said Baker, who is black. "I’m not offended by it at all. Not even one percent. I want this all to blow over.”
That’s also the sentiment of Ngozi Kaikurtan, a 33-year-old who was sitting nearby.
"I can’t say it’s bad or good. It's not a problem and I'm not offended by it. That’s their right,” he said. “I have a Jamaican and Ethiopian flag flying in front of my house. And no one is calling on me to take it down.”
Honour Olulu, a 23-year-old student who was pacing outside a nearby gym, said she's frustrated that others aren’t taking more strident views.
“The history behind it is not really something we, as black people, want to remember," she said. “At the end of the day, it depends on how hard people will fight for change. And this is one of many things we need to fight.”
A few storefronts down, Joan Sharpe, who owns an art shop on the town’s main drag, was itching to talk about the controversy.
Sharpe, who is white, grew up in Virginia in a town that revered its Confederate icons - her high school was named for Stonewall Jackson, one of the three Rebel leaders enshrined in the mountain's stony face - and said that those who want to change the monument “don't know the true history" of the war.
“Are we supposed to get rid of all flags because of the past?” she asked. “Look at all the good that came out of the Civil War - emancipation. I’m tired of people playing this racial crap. I love the mountain. It’s beautiful. And people who rewrite the history have got it wrong. It’s our history. A lot of it was wrong. But a lot was also right.”
Then there’s Sherman Mabins, a 64-year-old Air Force veteran who was wandering through one of the shops. Mabins, who grew up in Jim Crow Mississippi, said he believes the monument and the flag are too firmly entrenched in Georgia’s ethos.
“The fuss should have been made years ago. It's too late to have that conversation now,” said Mabins, who is black. “All these people are making noise on both sides. They don't know what it's really about. I lived through it.”
He added: “Life is short. Let them do what they want.”
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