For decades, the fourth Monday in April was also known in Georgia as Confederate Memorial Day. And while that term has been stripped from the calendar, today could mark another step away from that past.
The board of the Stone Mountain Memorial Association will meet today to discuss how the park — which happens to be the world’s largest monument to Confederate war dead — moves toward a less divisive future.
And the newly appointed leader of the board is the Rev. Abraham Mosley, a community advocate, Athens pastor, and now the first Black chairman of the authority in its more than six-decade history.
Mosley wouldn’t tell us much about the changes he’s planning to implement, aside from saying he’ll take a methodical and consensus-driven approach with the rest of the board.
“I’m going to do all we can to move the ball forward,” said Mosley, who was appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp last week.
“We’ve come a long ways from where we were. We haven’t got there yet, but we’ve come a long way from where we were. This is a historic moment, but we have a long ways to go, and I’m willing to be there to guide us as much as I possibly can.”
A range of initiatives could be in the works, spanning from changes to Rebel-themed attractions and signage at the park to new efforts to honor civil rights heroes on site.
We don’t think the timing of today’s meeting was a coincidence. Confederate Memorial Day existed on Georgia’s state calendar for years.
But in 2015, then-Gov. Nathan Deal struck Confederate Memorial Day and Robert E. Lee’s birthday from the state’s official holiday calendar, replacing them with the less controversial nomenclature of “State Holiday.”
Deal’s decision to quietly change the names came amid increased scrutiny of Georgia’s embrace of Confederate symbols after the massacre of nine black worshipers at a Charleston church by a suspected white supremacist.
(We should note that this year the state calendar shifted the observance of Monday’s holiday to April 2, when many state employees got the day off for Good Friday.)
So ponder this: The day that once remembered the Confederate’s war dead could be the first in which a newly appointed Black leader of Stone Mountain’s board begins to reduce the park’s focus on keeping the Confederate memory alive.
UPDATE: Stone Mountain Park CEO outlines ideas for changing Confederate memorial
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Credit: TNS
Credit: TNS
Look for a Washington-heavy week ahead in Georgia, as President Joe Biden delivers his first-ever Joint Address to Congress Wednesday night and then travels to Georgia Thursday to mark his 100th day in office.
The Joint Address takes the place of a State of the Union address for first-year presidents.
On Thursday, Biden will travel to Atlanta with First Lady Jill Biden. Details have not yet been released, but Biden is coming to Georgia now for the same reason he visited just after he was sworn into office: Without Georgia electing two new Democratic senators, Biden would have been mostly hamstrung by a Republican Senate.
Consider the trip part thank you note, part victory lap, part down payment on getting Sen. Raphael Warnock back in the seat in 2022 to keep the Democrats’ governing majority going.
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Just in time for Joe Biden’s visit, the Democratic National Committee is out with a new billboard near Hartsfield-Jackson airport thanking the president for putting the nation “back on track.”
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We’re getting lots of questions about the looming redistricting process ahead for Georgia, especially the timing of the special Legislative session that typically takes place in the August following a Census year.
Pandemic-related delays to last-year’s Census will also delay the process of Georgia lawmakers redrawing the districts for local, state and federal elected positions.
The new timeline: Georgia House Speaker David Ralston told GPB’s Bill Nigut Friday that he doesn’t expect a special Legislative session for redistricting until “the frost is on the pumpkin.”
Translation: You can keep your summer vacation plans. That special session is unlikely to happen until late fall.
And for more on the process itself, our colleague Maya Prahbu has all the latest and greatest.
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“Senate Bill 202 is a beast.” That’s how Gwinnett elections director Lynn Ledford described Georgia’s new elections law in a report from Curt Yeomans in Sunday’s Gwinnett Daily Post.
The piece illuminates how incredibly complicated it’s likely to be for counties to implement the new 98-page law, which affects everything from drop boxes to personnel decisions.
For example, new limits to drop boxes mean Gwinnett will go from 23 drop boxes to six, but a requirement to have an elections worker monitor the drop boxes at all times, instead of the previous 24-hour video surveillance, means counties will have to pay for new staff to sit next to the boxes all day during voting.
Ledford also predicted changes to absentee voting will send more Georgians back to voting in person and highlighted language that allows the State Elections Board to temporarily take over county elections boards, including a new requirement for counties to pay the ousted board, as well as any temporary replacements.
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In other appointment news, Gov. Brian Kemp named Chase Studstill to fill the District Attorney vacancy in the Alapaha Circuit Court last week.
Studstill replaces Dick Perryman, who became the Superior Court Judge of the Alapaha Judicial Circuit in February.
Studstill is a public defender in the Tift Judicial Circuit Public Defender’s Office and former legal assistant at the Alapaha Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office.
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Credit: J. Scott Applewhite
Credit: J. Scott Applewhite
U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter has at least one person cheering for him to enter the U.S. Senate race against Sen. Raphael Warnock, but not for the reason you think.
Writing in the Savannah Morning News, editorial page editor Adam Van Brimmer says, “Run, Buddy, Run,” but slams the 1st District Republican for his efforts to challenge the November presidential election.
Most interesting for our purposes, Van Brimmer also floats a few local names to replace Carter in the process.
“Whether his successor is Ben Watson or Ron Stephens or Eric Johnson or Jason Buelterman or Al Scott or Carl Gilliard or somebody we’ve not yet heard of, new blood is needed.”
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The College Republicans at the University of Georgia keep making news.
Their latest visitor, Democrat-turned-Republican Vernon Jones, dropped by campus to talk to the group, but ended up with this headline in the Red and Black: “Vernon Jones clashes with UGA students during visit.”
After showing up late, taking questions about party-switching, Donald Trump, and his vote against Georgia’s most recent anti-abortion law, Jones got this student review: “Every single word out of his mouth is a verifiable lie. I mean, it’s just shocking to me that he would walk in here and start lie after lie after lie.”
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The CEO of the Coca-Cola Company may be on the outs with the Georgia Legislature, but WALB-TV in Albany reports a new $60 million Coca-Cola Bottling Company distribution center is moving forward and nearing completion in Tifton, Ga.
Once open, the plant will employ 220 people in the area and process 3 million bottles of Coke products daily, right here in Georgia.
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Do you ever have the feeling Stacey Abrams is living her best life before the jumps back into the stew of state politics?
The latest example: Abrams is teasing her new legal thriller with an excerpt in Vanity Fair this month. And as our colleague Greg Bluestein points out, Abrams has ditched the pen name she used for her previous romance novels, Selena Montgomery, and is writing under her own name.
“While Justice Sleeps” is due out in May.
