Barred From a Confederate Shrine, Protesters Scuffle in Georgia

A small city in the Atlanta suburbs and the big, contentious Confederate monument that shares its name seemed headed for trouble on Saturday. Far-right activists and white supremacist militia groups planned to gather at Stone Mountain to symbolically “defend” the monument, and antiracist and far-left counterprotesters planned to confront them.

But the state park surrounding the monument locked its gates for the day, and the city made it clear that angry demonstrators spoiling for trouble would be far from welcome on the streets.

“Out of an abundance of caution,” municipal leaders said, the general public was asked “to avoid the City of Stone Mountain.” Public bus service was halted, and residents and business owners were “encouraged to refrain from travel and activities within the downtown area.”

And when some scuffling and pepper spraying broke out around midday between a small knot of white supremacists and more numerous counterprotesters, law enforcement officers in riot gear moved in to break it up. No arrests or serious injuries were reported.

Daniel Brown, the owner of the Gilly Brew Bar coffee shop in the city, says it sometimes feels as though he lives in one giant monument to the losing side of the Civil War, but he is proud to be here.

Mr. Brown, who is Black, runs his coffee shop in a nearly 200-year-old house that once belonged to the city’s first mayor, a slave owner named Andrew Johnson, on what was once considered the white side of the tracks that slice through town. He feels that he’s fostering community and diversity, not much farther than a mile from the immense bas-relief of Confederate leaders that the fuss is all about.