[CNN] Changes announced this week at Georgia's Stone Mountain Park, home to the nation's largest Confederate monument, are "the boldest step that has been taken" at the park since the state bought it decades ago, according to a park official.
Critics, though, say it isn't nearly bold enough.
Not "bold enough", imagine that.
The park's board on Monday voted -- unanimously, but with one abstention, according to its chairman -- to add an exhibit to an existing museum that will tell "the whole story" of the monument -- a giant carving of Confederate leaders on horseback -- including the history of the Ku Klux Klan on the mountain and its rebirth there in 1915, among other things.
"We took the appropriate actions, and it's the boldest step that has been taken at Stone Mountain Park since the park was acquired in 1962," said Bill Stephens, the CEO of the Stone Mountain Memorial Association (SMMA), which oversees the park, about 15 miles east of Atlanta. "There have been virtually no changes to the Confederate imagery or anything since that time, and now we're moving forward."
But critics remain as unmoved as the granite the monument is carved into. They say the changes are tinkering on the edges, especially in the wake of George Floyd's murder and renewed calls for the removal of Confederate monuments and symbols around the country.
|