The Georgia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans filed a lawsuit alleging the Stone Mountain Memorial Association is violating a state law requiring the association to maintain the park as an “appropriate and suitable memorial for the Confederacy.”
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in DeKalb Superior Court, targets a planned “truth-telling” museum at the park.
The planned exhibit “is completely contrary to the purposes of the Georgia law for the Stone Mountain Memorial Park as designed by the people of Georgia through their representatives,” the lawsuit states.
Stone Mountain contains the world’s largest Confederate monument, a carving of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.
For years, civil rights groups and historians have criticized the park’s approach to memorializing the Civil War and promoting a “lost cause” version of Confederate history. While largely dismissing calls to remove the bas-relief carving, the state-run association has taken steps in recent years to de-emphasize its glorification of the Confederacy, including removing the carving from its official logo and relocating a prominent display of Confederate flags.
In 2022, the association selected Birmingham-based Warner Museums, a firm whose projects include several civil rights-related exhibits and the Country Music Hall of Fame, to create an exhibit in the park’s Memorial Hall presenting a more balanced view of the war and the history behind the carving.
At the time, Stone Mountain Memorial Association CEO Bill Stephens said the organization would continue to fulfill the mandate to maintain the park as a Confederate monument.
The plaintiffs — Sons of Confederate Veterans members Philip Autrey and John Murlin; Timothy Pilgrim, Georgia Division commander of the organization; and Barbara Smith of Camden County — contend the planned exhibits do not honor the Confederacy but rather “assault its memory” and that some sections have no connection to the Confederacy.
Autrey said the association should never have approved the exhibit.
“The memorial association should go by what the state law says, which they’re not doing,” he said.
In 2023, the General Assembly allocated $11 million to pay for renovations to the park’s Memorial Hall and the new museum exhibit to “tell the truth” of the park’s history, including its connections to the Ku Klux Klan and resistance to the Civil Rights Movement.
“Warner’s proposed actions are clearly outside of the legislative mandate and legal responsibilities of the State of Georgia acting through the Stone Mountain Memorial Association,” the lawsuit states.
As pitched by Warner, the exhibit would include 10 sections, including one on how collective memory reshaped the cause, outcome and meaning of the Civil War. The pitch states that organizations like the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy “materialized as promoters of Lost Cause ideology” in the 1890s.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans alleged the proposed museum exhibit would be an “attack” on the group and the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
“What they’re attempting to do here is to redo the entire purpose of the park and actually spend their time trashing the Confederacy rather than memorializing it,” said Martin O’Toole, spokesperson for the state division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
Another section of the exhibit, titled “Monuments and Mythmaking,” would show how Confederate soldiers were commemorated in the South, while the contributions of African Americans to the Union’s victory were overshadowed and marginalized.
In 2023, Stephens said the research, renovations and exhibit were expected to take two years to complete. The exhibit is not yet open.
The Stone Mountain Memorial Association did not respond to a request for comment.
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