10-21-15
A Plan to Honor Martin Luther King at a Southern Civil War Symbol
Breaking Newstags: Martin Luther King, Confederate flag, Confederate memorial, Civil War Symbol, Stone Mountain
The idea is suffused with a simple poetry: A bell would be placed atop Stone Mountain, the massive granite outcropping east of Atlanta invoked by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his “I Have a Dream” speech — one of the places from which, as Dr. King imagined it, a nation no longer divided by racism might “Let freedom ring.”
But this “Freedom Bell” proposal, unveiled this month by a state government authority as a tribute to the civil rights leader, has become mired in complications and controversy, the latest skirmish over Southern symbols prompted by the racially motivated massacre of nine black churchgoers this summer in Charleston, S.C.
Opposition came quickly, and perhaps expectedly, from the Georgia division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who said that the mountain, which is adorned with a huge carving depicting Confederate heroes, is classified as a Confederate memorial by state statute. “The erection of monuments to anyone other than Confederate heroes in Stone Mountain Park,” the group said in a written statement, “is in contradistinction to the purpose for which the park exists and would make it a memorial to something different.”
comments powered by Disqus
News
- The Battle over Reproductive Freedom Still Rages at Dr. George Tiller's Former Clinic
- How Decades of Coal Mining Left West Virginia Vulnerable to Flooding
- Can 500 Dinner Discussions Bring Atlantans to Recognition and Reconciliation over the 1906 Race Massacre?
- Remember Vin Scully With His Classic Call of the Last Outs of Sandy Koufax's Perfect Game
- How Trumpism Changed the Claremont Institute (and Vice-Versa)
- Katherine Stewart Joins Jane Coaston to Discuss the Rise of Christian Nationalism
- Edward Miller on the Resurfacing of Bircher Conspiratorialism on the Right Today
- Review: Two Books on the Recent History of Polarization
- Corey Robin on the Enigma of Clarence Thomas
- Review: David Sehat on the Struggle to Make a Secular America