The Stoning of Stone Mountain

 

There are really only two basic opinions when it comes to the world’s largest carving on the face of the fifteen million year old granite monolith just outside Atlanta, Georgia . . . revere it as an important chapter in American history or destroy it as a shameful altar to the Ku Klux Klan.  While there are many Americans with their own personal or political agendas concerning the mammoth monument at Stone Mountain, such as the former minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives and the unsuccessful candidate for that State’s governor in 2018, Stacy Abrams, who demands that the famed Confederate memorial be sandblasted from the face of the mountain, many others, even foreign visitors, take a far different view of the famed carvings. 

In March of last year, a lady from Japan named Yumiko Yamamoto, the president of a group called Japanese Women for Peace and Justice, made her first visit to Atlanta and on her tour of Stone Mountain she was greatly impressed by not only the massive equestrian figures of President Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson, but also the inscription on the monument’s plaque by Beverly M. DuBose, which reads;  “The vast majority of those who fought and died for the Southern Confederacy had little in worldly goods or comforts.  Neither victory nor defeat would have greatly altered their lot.  Yet, for four long years they waged one of the bloodiest wars in history.  They fought for a principle:  The right to live life in a chosen manner.  This dedication to a cause drove them to achieve:  A monument of greatness which endures to this day.” 

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