The Sons of Confederate Veterans do have a valid point
The Sons of Confederate Veterans have a valid argument.
As they point out, Georgia law requires that Stone Mountain Park be maintained as “an appropriate and suitable memorial for the Confederacy.” They argue further that installing a memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. on the property, as park officials now propose, would be “an intentional act of disrespect toward the stated purpose of the Stone Mountain memorial from its inception.”
As the Sons see it, you simply cannot put a memorial to a civil rights leader such as King in a park dedicated by law to the Confederacy. The conflict would be too direct. It “would be akin to the state flying a Confederate battle flag atop the King Center in Atlanta against the wishes of King supporters,” the SCV argues. “Both would be altogether inappropriate and disrespectful acts, repugnant to Christian people.”
Fortunately, I think there’s an easy way out of this dilemma: Change that state law. Change it because a government that was formed for the primary purpose of keeping millions of Americans in bondage and perpetual servitude does not deserve to be honored in any official manner.
Alexander Stephens, a Georgian who served as vice president of the Confederacy, explained its purpose in no uncertain terms in an 1861 speech in Savannah. The Founding Fathers, he told his audience, had believed in their hearts that slavery was wrong. Even slaveholders such as Thomas Jefferson believed that “the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically,” and would eventually be ended.
But the Confederacy was different:
“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
We should not have a state park to memorialize such a government. We should not have a law on the books requiring that such a government, founded on such a cornerstone, be honored in any way. The law must be repealed. And if our state leaders tell us that the time has not yet come for such a repeal, then they tell us and the rest of the world that we are not yet ready to fully divorce ourselves from that attitude.
To be clear, that doesn’t by any means suggest that the sculpture carved into the side of Stone Mountain should be removed or even altered. That should never happen. The battle flags should come down, the Confederate memorabilia that by law must be sold on park grounds should be removed. But the sculpture can no more be removed from Stone Mountain than the lasting scars of the Civil War can be removed. It is part of our mutual history, a relic of an earlier time that reminds us how far we have come, and when necessary how far we have yet to go. It is important to all Georgians, of all races, that it be preserved. It is heritage.
But the law? The law must go, and soon. And I appreciate the public service performed by the Sons of Confederate Veterans in making that point so clear.
