On Monday, Gov. Nathan Deal vacillated slightly on the topic of a bell tower atop Stone Mountain, in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech some 52 years ago.
“Like any good idea, unless you have people to buy into it, what may be a good idea may not prove to be so good after all,” the governor said, citing a “cacophony” of opposition.
You cannot blame Deal for his doubts. He is a Republican on somewhat new ground. It’s been hard to filter out the nonsense. But let’s you and me give it a try.
We’ll deal with the easiest objection first – the claim that, because Stone Mountain is a Confederate memorial, designated so by state law, it cannot be anything else. Certainly not a place where a modern political movement that transformed the South might be recognized.
But there was no similar objection, over the course of decades, when the Ku Klux Klan rallied there in the name of its peculiar political agenda. As late as 1980, according to the archives. The gatherings were famous and frightening. (Some years later, working the weekend desk, I miscalculated and assigned a bright young, African-American reporter to write about the Scottish Highland Games. “Maria,” I said, “Go to Stone Mountain and cover the clans.” The blood drained from her face, and we found something else for her to do.)
So burned crosses didn’t insult Confederate dead, but a bell tower would. An MLK monument would somehow violate the sanctity of the park, but “Snow Mountain” and a golf course don’t. All you can do is shake your head at that one.
Then there is the other side of this coin. Representatives of the SCLC and two local chapters of the NAACP say that building a monument to King just a short cable car ride from Jefferson Davis’ nose would be an insult to the civil rights leader.
“To dedicate something to him in a place with rogues, traitors and war-mongers is wrong,” said Richard Rose, president of the Atlanta NAACP.
And yet we haven’t heard Rose object to the erection of an MLK statue on the state Capitol grounds, as has been proposed by the governor. King’s likeness will be nestled amongst statues and portraits of white heroes of the Civil War and Reconstruction, who might also be described as “rogues, traitors and war-mongers.”
But those Capitol figures are clad in very nice suits. So that may be the difference.
What about the Confederate flag that flies at Stone Mountain? Certainly that poisons the well, others have said. But if the King legacy is a living one, wherever that flag flies is exactly where King belongs. No one ever said Southern history was easy. Or simple.
Fortunately, adults are beginning to take control of the conversation. On Wednesday, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said it might be right and proper to defer to people who actually heard King utter the phrase, “Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.”
“I’m not comfortable with other folks who didn’t do as much as John Lewis or Ambassador Young did, or others, making a judgment about this,” Reed said.
Andrew Young, the former mayor of Atlanta, has in fact weighed in. “It is not only a good idea. It is a necessary idea for this nation to pull together,” he told my AJC colleague Ernie Suggs. “The civil rights movement was never about one side winning over the other. It was always about coming together.”
Over the weekend, U.S. Rep. John Lewis endorsed the Stone Mountain plan, too. “It is my hope and my prayer that the people in this state and this community can come together and honor Dr. King the way that he should be honored,” Lewis told an 11Alive camera.
U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson is far too young to be an MLK contemporary. But Stone Mountain is in his DeKalb County-dominated Fourth District. He’s working an opinion piece to be published in the Journal-Constitution next week. It includes these lines:
“While Stone Mountain’s divisive and painful history can never be obliterated or sand-blasted away, the time has come for all to recognize that now is the time to claim a new legacy and carve a new narrative for Stone Mountain….
“What better way to symbolize such a legacy than to etch onto Stone Mountain a lasting memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., which would coexist with the symbols of the Confederacy defeated in part by the movement which he led?”
That’s not a cacophony. That sounds like consensus.
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