Sons of Confederate Veterans Celebrate White Supremacy at the Foot of Stone Mountain

Earlier today a small group gathered to commemorate Confederate Memorial Day at the foot of Stone Mountain, Georgia. The event was organized by the Georgia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. A spokesman for the group offered the tired mantra: “We are here about heritage and history. This has nothing to do about race, we welcome all to our programs.”

Source: Southern Poverty Law Center

We can talk about the Lost Cause origins of Confederate Memorial Day, but the earliest celebrations were steeped in a real sense of loss that communities across the former Confederacy experienced in the wake of war. The absence of fathers, brothers, and sons was a common experience.

Consider the casualties in Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. According to historian Joseph Glatthaar:

The Army of Northern Virginia had some of the toughest fighting and incurred some of the greatest losses in American history. For the entire war, close to 30,000 of these soldiers were killed in action and more than 125,000 were wounded. Nearly one in every four soldiers died, with a slightly higher percentage falling in battle rather than succumbing to disease. Four of every ten soldiers in Lee’s army were either killed in battle or wounded at least once, and five of every nine soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured before the final surrender. Six percent of Lee’s army suffered multiple wounds and almost another 10 percentage endured some combination of wounds and imprisonment. By factoring in those who were discharge for disabilities, almost three of every four soldiers who ever served in the Army of Northern Virginia were killed, died of disease, wounded, captured, or discharged for a disability. That statistic rises to more than 80 percent when those who deserted are factored out of the equation. (pp. 468-69)

Factor in the other Confederate armies and you can begin to appreciate the importance that white southerners place on honoring the fallen in cemeteries across the South.

Just to be clear, I am not in any way justifying the cause for which these men suffered and died to defend, but simply stating an important fact. It would be surprising if such ceremonies did not take place, but this profound sense of loss and the scale of mourning that took place in these communities has all but been lost.

Let’s be clear that this is not what we saw this afternoon at Stone Mountain. That ceremony had nothing to do with honoring the memory of Confederate soldiers. It did not take place in a Confederate cemetery away from the prying eyes of the general public. Stone Mountain has no direct connection to the war. It is not part of a Civil War battlefield.

Event organizers chose to hold their ceremony on the sight where the Ku Klux Klan was reborn in 1915. It was only after Stone Mountain was consecrated by the Klan that work began on the large relief sculpture of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis. It was finally completed decades later following the civil rights movement. In other words, the sculpture itself wouldn’t exist in the first place without the earlier presence of the Klan.

Regardless of how the SCV chose to sell this event, they decided on a location that is steeped in the history of white supremacy.

Everyone in that crowd understood this. In fact, their keynote speaker was none other than Martin O’Toole, who is a member of the SCV and the Charles Martel Society, a self-avowed white nationalist group based in Atlanta. Groups like the SCV don’t even try to hide their white supremacy. They are proud of it and that’s also why they chose Stone Mountain.

A number of individuals and organization called on the Stone Mountain Memorial Association (SMMA) beforehand to rescind their permit to the SCV to hold this event. I don’t know what power they have to control the issuance of permits, but I hope that this event will reinforce a sense of urgency among members who are pushing for a complete overhaul of the museum space and the surrounding landscape.

It’s going to be incredibly difficult for the SMMA to expect community support for its new vision of Stone Mountain as long as organization like the SCV continue to embrace it as a shrine to white supremacy.

In that case we are all better off if the relief sculpture is blasted off the side of the mountain.