What could/should be done with Georgia's Stone Mountain Park's mountainside Confederate Generals Memorial Carving? Leave it be? Blast it out and recarve it into something else? Stop maintaining it and let nature slowly obscure it? Over the years park management (currently Herschend Family Entertainment) has added numerous family activities to make Stone Mountain Park a full-blown destination attraction. The park's web site doesn't shy away from mentioning the Memorial's Confederate connection but it hardly promotes it either. What direction do you think the park should go?
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David Thornton did a wonderful piece on how, growing up in Georgia, he took the tales of the Confederacy in stride and defended the statues on historical grounds. But he changed his mind after talking to black people and realizing many of these monuments were only put up in the 1950s as a protest to civil rights.
He summed it up with "we're not erasing history, there are plenty of Civil War museums to visit but we also don't have to honor folks who turned on their country to support slavery." And pointing out "yes, the Confederacy was always about slavery, never say different."
Keep them. Maintain them. Full stop. Anyone who can’t see beyond the Civil War myth about the gallant white knights of the Union riding in to free slaves from their terrible slaveholding oppressors aren’t worth listening to. Whig and Yankee history has been a plague on humanity. If you honestly thought the war was fought for the moral cause of freeing slave I would only direct you to Lincoln’s direct words on what he thought about emancipation for slaves prior to Britain, France, and the Vatican discussing recognizing the Confederacy as a sovereign nation.
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There was a great article on The Guardian website yesterday, What we can do now about Stone Mountain's 150ft Confederate carving? that listed some options.
The post argued that, rather than blasting the damned thing off the mountain, that the state should let it become overgrown, allowing nature to obscure it from view. Then the rest of the park should get a redesign, to end any celebration of Confederacy. If you're interested in the topic, please give it a read.
As for my take, I saw the laser show ages ago and thought the whole place a bit off even then. Stone Mountain truly is the "world's biggest participation trophy," celebrating three of America's most notorious losers. Yet the park could be a great public space. I'd love to see a fresh approach to unlock its potential.