Board members governing the country’s largest Confederate monument voted Tuesday to relocate the site’s Confederate flags and open a museum exhibit detailing the Ku Klux Klan’s involvement in the creation of the site, which displays a mountainside carving of Confederate officials.
The Stone Mountain Memorial Association, which oversees Georgia’s Stone Mountain Park near Atlanta, will move the flags out of a highly trafficked walking trail after criticism over the site’s memorialization of the Confederacy.
“We’ve just taken our first step today to where we need to go,” said Rev. Abraham Mosley, who Republican Gov. Brian Kemp appointed in April to become the board’s first black chairman following the Tuesday vote, according to the Associated Press.
ATLANTA TO VOTE ON RELOCATION OF LONG-STANDING CONFEDERATE STATUE
The board did not make any decisions related to the 190-by-90 foot carving, which portrays Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, as well as Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
Former DeKalb County NAACP President John Evans said members should go beyond flag relocation during the board’s meeting.
“We need to take down the flags,” Evans said. “We need to change all the street names and do what we said we were going to do: eliminate the Confederacy from Stone Mountain Park.”
Eric Cleveland, a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, said keeping the carving is not racist but rather honors Confederate soldiers. Cleveland reportedly took the board’s decision as an acceptable “compromise” but said critics of the site “will not stop until our history is completely erased.”
States and municipalities across the country have decided in recent years to take down, relocate, or otherwise add qualifying context to their Confederate monuments, with proponents generally arguing the monuments celebrate or affirm the views of those who supported slavery. Critics, such as Cleveland, tend to argue monuments are a means of remembering history.
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The Washington Examiner reached out to the Stone Mountain Memorial Association for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
