SCV Again Fighting to Preserve Stone Mountain (GA)
Confederate groups says Stone Mountain changes violate state law
The Georgia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans filed a lawsuit alleging the Stone Mountain Memorial Association is violating a state law requiring the association to maintain the park as an “appropriate and suitable memorial for the Confederacy.”
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in DeKalb Superior Court, targets a planned “truth-telling” museum at the park.
The planned exhibit “is completely contrary to the purposes of the Georgia law for the Stone Mountain Memorial Park as designed by the people of Georgia through their representatives,” the lawsuit states.
Stone Mountain contains the world’s largest Confederate monument, a carving of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.
For years, civil rights groups and historians have criticized the park’s approach to memorializing the Civil War and promoting a “lost cause” version of Confederate history. While largely dismissing calls to remove the bas-relief carving, the state-run association has taken steps in recent years to de-emphasize its glorification of the Confederacy, including removing the carving from its official logo and relocating a prominent display of Confederate flags.
In 2022, the association selected Birmingham-based Warner Museums, a firm whose projects include several civil rights-related exhibits and the Country Music Hall of Fame, to create an exhibit in the park’s Memorial Hall presenting a more balanced view of the war and the history behind the carving.
At the time, Stone Mountain Memorial Association CEO Bill Stephens said the organization would continue to fulfill the mandate to maintain the park as a Confederate monument.
The plaintiffs — Sons of Confederate Veterans members Philip Autrey and John Murlin; Timothy Pilgrim, Georgia Division commander of the organization; and Barbara Smith of Camden County — contend the planned exhibits do not honor the Confederacy but rather “assault its memory” and that…