The carving of three Confederate generals on Stone Mountain has been a controversial American symbol for decades. It is considered the largest Confederate imagery in the world.
PBS explores Stone Mountain Park and the carving itself as part of the series “Iconic America: Our Symbols and Stories with David Rubenstein.” The episode airs Tuesday, July 25, and will be available on demand for PBS Passport members. Other icons featured in the series include the Statue of Liberty, the American cowboy, the Hollywood sign and Fenway Park in Boston.
“I think people should learn more about Stone Mountain, the good and the bad,” said Rubenstein , co-founder and co-chairman of The Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest global investment firms and chairman of both the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the National Gallery of Art. He also worked in the White House during Jimmy Carter’s administration as a deputy domestic policy advisor.
Credit: Andrew Harnik
Credit: Andrew Harnik
Sam Pollard, the show’s executive producer, said he has visited Georgia many times and his mother hails from the state, but he had never been to Stone Mountain until he put this episode together.
“We really wanted to show the levels of complexities of Stone Mountain,” Pollard said, noting that the surrounding neighborhoods are now heavily Black and many of the people of color who visit the park know little to nothing about the carving’s origins or history.
When Rubenstein visited, he said, “nobody seemed focus on the monument. They only cared about having a good time at the park.”
The episode features interviews with residents of Stone Mountain, representatives of the activist group Stone Mountain Action Coalition seeking to reduce the Confederate presence at the park and the leader of the existing Stone Mountain Memorial Association, which oversees the park.
Although no actual Civil War battles happened on the land that now represents Stone Mountain Park, the acreage was owned for decades by the Venable family as a granite quarry. The Venables were believers in racial segregation and helped birth the modern Ku Klux Klan. For decades, the Klan would meet at Stone Mountain, burning crosses atop the mountain until the early 1960s.
The episode explores the revisionist history many white Southerners embraced after the Civil War dubbed the “Lost Cause,” which downplayed the entire issue of slavery and led to hundreds of Confederate statues placed in parks and city squares nationwide. The carving is yet another manifestation of that. “It’s outrageous when you think about it,” Pollard said.
The carving, promoted by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, took 58 years to complete and was finished in 1972. The episode shows video of U.S. vice president Spiro Agnew speaking at the dedication amid a sea of white audience members. “I was surprised Agnew showed up,” Rubenstein said.
Since 1983, the base of the mountain has been home to a popular laser show, which originally glorified the Confederacy with lasers forming live horses as the trio of generals galloped into combat. The episode shows early video of that show, which featured a soundtrack that included Elvis Presley singing “Dixie.”
Over the years, the laser show was gradually stripped of its Confederate roots.
Earlier this month, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution checked a brand new version of the show, which debuted in May. It celebrates various cities such as New Orleans, New York and Miami and styles of music including jazz, hip-hop, country and rock. Presley is still featured singing his other hits (not “Dixie”) along with Atlanta artists such as OutKast, Ludacris and TLC. There is nary a mention of the carving’s origins or history although the lights and drones use it as an inescapable backdrop.
Before the show begins, the voice of Monica Pearson introduces former United Nations ambassador and Atlanta mayor Andrew Young, whose face appears over the carving. as he gives a 90-second speech.
Young said the Rev. Martin Luther King gave his life so families could live in a “diverse, peaceful and prosperous community. That’s what Stone Mountain is. Freedom is ringing in Stone Mountain.”
IF YOU WATCH
“Iconic America,” 10 p.m. Tuesday , July 25 on GPB and PBA
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