Stone Mountain

David Rubenstein: To understand history, it's important to visit places where history has occurred.

[Applause] [Cheering and applause] At Stone Mountain, I was surprised to find this symbol of the Confederacy is now surrounded by a Disneyland type of atmosphere.

[Man singing indistinctly] Man: For many here in the South, particularly white folks that have grown up here, Stone Mountain is a sign of heritage... ♪ but there's a lot of other folks that see a symbol of hatred.

[Fireworks exploding] Man two: Stone Mountain Park is very closely associated with the Klan.

There's archival footage going back decade after decade after decade of the Klan lighting their torches and crosses on the top of the mountain.

Burn ######, burn!

[Cheering] Man: Rock and roll!

[Cheering] News Anchor: Saturday afternoon, police had to control 3 different fights on Robert E. Lee Boulevard.

[Shouting] Reporter: Stacey Abrams calling on the state to remove the Confederate carving from Stone Mountain.

Heritage, not hate.

♪ Rubenstein: Should Confederate leaders remain on places like Stone Mountain, or should they be erased?

♪ ♪ Rubenstein: There are hundreds of historical monuments across America.

♪ These markers are one way a nation tells its story... but how we perceive them changes over time.

Protestors: Don't shoot!

Man: Hands up!

Don't shoot!

Rubenstein: Today, as our nation is wrestling with its racial history, I want to understand what is the place of monuments?

To explore the issue, I'm going to Georgia's Stone Mountain, the largest Confederate monument in the country.

[Indistinct chatter] ♪ Man: Being on Stone Mountain is an experience that allows you to forget whatever else is going on in your life.

It's so beautiful.

People are forgetting about their troubles, forgetting about their struggles in life.

They're just in--in awe.

Woman: I go with family and friends.

We picnic.

We have fun.

♪ Man: I'm seeing families enjoying what Stone Mountain has to offer.

I'm seeing that every day out there, and I talk to people, I talk to them.

"Why are you out here?"

"I'm out here getting "my exercise in.

"I'm out here to enjoy, "and I got to go and get "this 8-hour job.

"Now I'm going to work, and I'll probably be back out here tomorrow or the next day."

As a young boy, did you ever visit Stone Mountain?

I lived in Atlanta, and I--when I went to Stone Mountain, I went out there to fish, but I did hear people say, "Don't be at Stone Mountain at sundown."

In those days, did you consider Stone Mountain as a racist symbol?

No, I did not see it that way.

But today, many people see it as the symbol of the Confederacy, memorializing slavery.

Does that bother you, or do you think that's something you can change the image of?

Well, it's history, and there's a lot of good, and there's a lot of bad history, so I would love for the whole story to be told about Stone Mountain.

♪ [Indistinct chatter] ♪ [Indistinct chatter] [Bell rings] ♪ Woman: Hold on.

Rubenstein: Stone Mountain is a beautiful site that's so unique, unique in the world, but also a monument to Confederate leaders, and so it's a reminder that our country really hasn't recovered completely from the scars of the Civil War because the Confederate leaders were carved into this mountain in the 20th century.

Woman: The carving of the mountain...

I really don't like talking about it.

It is Confederate soldiers.

I don't go to Stone Mountain Park to worship the carving.

Historical symbols are important to me, and all of them have been under attack in America today.

What Stone Mountain represents to me at least and to I think members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans is a memorialization of the Confederate honor, traditions, and the sacrifice made by Confederate military, as well as civilians.

Man: Nothing happened at Stone Mountain Park during the Civil War.

No one's buried there.

There were no battles there.

What the Confederacy did is rebel to perpetuate slavery.

♪ So I got involved because it is a tragedy that anyone should have to walk under a Confederate flag simply to enjoy the beauty of Stone Mountain Park.

♪ Rubenstein: What are we looking for?

We're looking for the records of the Stone Mountain Memorial Association.

This is where you come to see the evidence, and people don't believe you anymore, so you take them back to the primary documents, and that's what you find here.

Rubenstein, voice-over: And Stone Mountain today, as we talk, is a symbol to you of what?

Man: It's a symbol of all that that is misunderstood.

Do you think most people in Atlanta are proud of Stone Mountain and what it stands for or maybe a little embarrassed about it?

I think mostly they ignore it except when people raise the issue of that it should be erased or blown off the mountain, and then they talk about, "Well, we're erasing history.

"We can't change history.

We need to honor history."

But they don't know what history they're talking about.

Stone Mountain is really a Massive Resistance monument.

Massive Resistance is the resistance that white people in the South exerted against integration.

It is something that was deep and pervasive, and it was about everything that affected the "Southerners' way of life," every way they dealt with African Americans.

♪ Woman: I live in the city of Stone Mountain, but I live in the Shermantown section.

The rest of the town was white.

I growed up in full segregation.

We had--our schools was separate.

Our churches was separate.

Everything was separate.

And the stores in our city, they was owned by white people.

They had a drug store here, and we could go in there and buy ice cream, but we could not sit at the table.

We had to buy the ice cream and go out.

So when integration was passed, we thought we was gonna go in the drug store and buy ice cream and sit at the table and eat it.

They just took all the tables out, so the whites couldn't sit, and the Black couldn't either.

Heh heh.

It's the bottom line, they didn't want us to mix.

I felt very bad because I grew up here.

My daddy was a World War I veteran, and he lost his right arm when he was in service, and he would always tell me, "So many of us went to serve our country, "and we come back, and we couldn't even vote, couldn't buy a can of beer."

He said, "But we went."

He said, "So you cannot dwell on the way it is now.

You've got to think that it's gonna get better."

♪ Thurgood Marshall: Today's opinion makes a clear cut determination that the negro school children must be given their rights and given them, to use the court's language, as soon as practicable and on a non-discriminatory basis.

[Indistinct chatter] Rubenstein: In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education, a unanimous decision, said that integration was gonna be the law of the land and schools had to be integrated.

How did you hear about it?

I heard about it walking home from school, and I still remember exactly where I was.

I was on the corner of Bartlette and Blanding streets, when I heard that, and of course, uh, naivete, uh, was very present.

We thought that the next school session we would be going to integrated schools.

When that decision came out, billboards went up all over the country-- "Impeach Earl Warren."

The retrenchment started, and so we have to keep in mind that those elements are always among us.

I'd like to say that I do think integration is wrong.

And I don't believe that at present that the negro is as well-educated or, shall we say, as a capable of doing the same work.

I don't dislike negroes that much.

I just don't care to associate with them.

The Supreme Court is supposed to be the law of the land, but can 9 people be the law of the land when you have the whole United States that's supposed to be by the people and for the people?

Hale: The reaction in Georgia among white people was horror that the federal government was going to come in and change their way of life.

["Dixie" playing] Man: Through the fifties and sixties, we see a wave of Confederate memorialization.

So Georgia adds the Confederate flag to its state flag.

Other states do the same thing, adding Confederate symbols.

Schools are renamed after Confederate generals.

Streets are renamed for Robert E. Lee and Dixie Highway and all this other stuff to reassert white supremacy... Woman: Go get them, boys.

Jeffries: to say to Black folk that "No, we are going to fight to preserve and maintain segregation."

As long as I am your governor, there will be no breakdown in the pattern of segregation in this state.

Hale: Marvin Griffin, who was then a gubernatorial candidate, 57 days after Brown v. Board, made it a campaign promise to buy Stone Mountain and turn it into a Confederate monument.

That was his way of sticking it in the eye of the federal government that we're gonna make the biggest monument possible in actual conflict with the whole idea of equality.

Did he get elected in part because of that promise?

He did, but it was also his other stances on integration.

Governor Griffin, when is it going to be feasible to end segregation in Georgia schools?

Well, Don, I would say never.

Interviewer: What do colored people now hope to gain by pressing the segregation fight at this time?

Well, we hope to achieve equal rights.

Hale: The Civil Rights Movement really came into prominence after Brown v. Board of Education, and the carving starts at that same time.

Martin Luther King Jr.: Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Woman: Yes!

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that, let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

[Applause] Griffin: Atlanta possesses a would-be, pretended dictator named Martin Luther King!

[Cheering and booing] Reporter: How does this carving compare with Mount Rushmore or some of the other carvings around?

This is the greatest, I think, in the world of this type and the only one of this type, and we're very proud to have the privilege and honor of working on this great historical monument in this Stone Mountain Park here in good old Georgia.

Heh heh.

Announcer: A promise made.

A promise kept.

Throughout his term of office, Governor Marvin Griffin provides the strong leadership necessary to preserve the customs and traditions for which our forefathers fought.

Marvin Griffin does maintain segregation in Georgia.

The Griffin years-- good years for Georgia.

["The Star-spangled Banner" playing] ♪ The memorial carving here at Stone Mountain is finally finished, and officials are calling it the eighth wonder of the world.

News anchor: Today, the vice president flew to Georgia to help dedicate a new Confederate monument at Stone Mountain.

[Cheering and applause] Spiro Agnew: We must recall those principles of loyalty, dignity, and honor that shine through the lives of men we commemorate today.

We must set aside the evils of sectionalism once and for all.

Just as the South cannot afford to discriminate against any of its own people, the rest of the nation cannot afford to discriminate against the South.

[Cheering and applause] Rubenstein: At the time of the dedication, did many people say, "It's not appropriate "for the vice president of the United States to come to a Confederate Memorial"?

Hale: People said that, and they also said how embarrassing it was that the president didn't come.

So you had both of those views.

It was intended to be a national monument.

It was about the entire South and then ultimately about the nation.

How did people explain the fact that Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis, these 3 men were fighting against the United States government?

Why would they be great national heroes?

Because mythology elevated these folks into heroes.

Jeffries: The carving at Stone Mountain was completed in the early 1970s, but of course, the history of Confederate memorialization dates back immediately after the Civil War, after the Confederacy falls... after Robert E. Lee surrenders at Appomattox.

♪ Hale: White Southerners were trying to wrestle with how could all of the death and destruction happen?

1/5 of the men of military age were dead... and so there was a great loss and grieving, and wondering "How could this happen to us?"

Jeffries: In order to believe that the Confederacy and these Confederates were noble, you have to have this myth of victimization of white Southerners, that they are the real victims during the Civil War but certainly afterward, and any effort to redeem them ought to be considered heroic.

And so they came up with a rationalization called the Lost Cause that then got built upon, and it ultimately became a national rationalization.

Jeffries: The Lost Cause is a version of American history centered around the Civil War that suggests that slavery itself was a benign institution, that the Civil War was caused by a disagreement over states' rights, including their right to preserve the institution of slavery, but we're just gonna leave the slavery part out.

Man: I grew up in a small mountain town in western North Carolina.

The town and the community is 99% white, rural, conservative, mostly a farming town.

The history of the Civil War in my high school or in my elementary or middle school was a bland topic.

It was explained as a war between two areas, right?

It was a civil war, meaning that it was brother against brother.

What was the reason behind the war?

Was told that it was states' rights.

The only time that we really talked about slavery was in particular times of the year, right?

When we look at Black history month, but it wasn't connected to that war necessarily, and that happens actually a lot.

You know, we think about the "Gone With The Wind" movie.

The Lost Cause became the dominant narrative, martyring us as, you know, a victim of a war that went wrong.

Jeffries: The Hollywood blockbuster "Gone With the Wind," which picks up on this Lost Cause narrative, slavery ain't that bad.

The lionization of Confederate heroes.

There's This myth of Confederate nobility.

Rubenstein: "Gone with the Wind" would give a picture of slaves that were kind of helping serve white people, but it didn't seem like they were getting lashed at or they were chained or anything.

That was an important part of the Lost Cause mythology, and "Gone with the Wind" certainly elevated that and put it all in Technicolor.

In fact, was slavery the real cause of the Civil War in your view?

It was because what they said at the time, what the Southerners said.

Read the secession documents.

Slavery is all over those documents as a rationale.

Jeffries: What I have here is the public and secret proceedings of the 1861 secession convention, why Georgia chose to join the side of the Confederacy.

Quote, "For the last 10 years, "we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint "against our non-slaveholding Confederate States, "with reference to the subject of African slavery.

"They have endeavored to weaken our security, "to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, "and persistently refused to comply "with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property."

And it's stated quite clearly that the issues are all connected to the institution of slavery, that their problem with the Union is this attempt to deprive enslavers of their property, and by property, we're talking about the people that they held in bondage.

But the Lost Cause is really pivotal in determining how slavery and the Confederacy is taught and remembered.

Man: ♪ Mighty mountain ♪ ♪ What have you seen?

♪ Jeffries: Stone Mountain is rooted in this fairytale notion.

Man: ♪ Stone Mountain, Stone Mountain ♪ ♪ A place where history lives ♪ Woman: My family moved to the Stone Mountain community in the eighties, and I'm 1 of 7 kids.

My family went to Stone Mountain Park often.

Man: In the plantation cookhouse, Elena Weaver turns the clock back to bygone ways.

Williams: They actually had Black people dress up as slaves.

Man: Remember how it used to be?

It's still that way for you to enjoy at Stone Mountain Park.

Williams: It made it seem like there was this sense of belonging, this sense of community amongst slaves and slaveowners, but just that sentence alone is kind of laughable.

Man: ♪ I wish I was in the land of cotton, old times ♪ Williams: When I was a kid, we would go to the laser show a lot.

It's changed over the years, but initially, it just kind of glorified the days of the Confederacy.

It started off with the "Dixie" song.

Man: ♪ And I wish I was in Dixie ♪ ♪ Hooray, hooray, in Dixie... ♪ Williams: The lasers would outline the 3 Confederate generals, and they were galloping off into combat.

[Cheering and applause] People would whoop and holler and whistle and clap their hands and rejoice as if this was some glorified moment to celebrate.

[Cheering continues] Rubenstein: Can you explain the context in which the Lost Cause mythology was developed?

Who really developed that?

It was developed in the South by both historians and politicians and the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

O'Toole: The women of the South were in the forefront to memorialize the Confederate veterans.

There's a story told by a federal soldier right after the war, and he said, "The Confederate soldiers "themselves are reconciled "to the results of the clash of arms," I think is how he put it, "but the women of the South are bitter and would continue the war on."

The United Daughters of the Confederacy, they were the ones that went out and decorated the graves and started the cemeteries and began the movements to put up memorials and monuments.

These monuments represented a grave marker for the people of the time whose husbands and sons went off to war and never came back.

I learned a little bit about one of the founding members of the Daughters of the Confederacy whose name was Helen Plane.

She was a Civil War widow.

She was also a Klan sympathizer, but it strikes me that much of her fervor might have had initially do with a sense of personal grief.

You know, "I lost a husband.

"I want to redeem whatever it was I believe he stood for," whether or not that jibes with historical fact or political fact.

Hale: The United Daughters of the Confederacy became probably the greatest propaganda organization this country's ever seen.

Jeffries: They literally will create censor boards, a rubric for determining what kinds of textbooks could go into schools.

It had to talk about the War of Northern Aggression.

You had to frame slavery in a particular way.

This reimagining of what the Civil War was, that only is allowed to gain currency and become part of the dominant narrative because white Northerners are willing to go along with it.

♪ Hale: All over the country, you got monuments erected for all the Confederate leaders.

Even in Washington.

The United Daughters of the Confederacy are behind all of that.

Rubenstein: We are in the Capitol.

We're in Statuary Hall.

Each state can identify two individuals that they would like to have a statue of, and many states have identified Confederate leaders, and as a result, there are Confederate statues in the capitol of the United States.

So Jefferson Davis is here... Ah!

and he was the President of the Confederacy.

Do you think he should still be in Statuary Hall?

No, I don't.

I think he should be out of here, and I think that we should change some highway names and other stuff around the country because he was a bad guy.

Oh, Mr. Vice President.

Vice president of the Confederacy.

Now see, they've got him directly across from the president of the Confederacy.

What is this about?

The president of the Confederacy, the vice president of the Confederacy, all sitting here.

Institutional racism is real, and I think we ought to really do a deep dive into history and to get it right.

Rubenstein, voice-over: Around 1915 or so, there's a movie called "Birth of a Nation," which is basically an homage to the Ku Klux Klan among other things.

Was the Ku Klux Klan a very prominent organization in Atlanta or Georgia at that time?

No.

It was reborn on the top of Stone Mountain November 25, 1915, inspired by "Birth of a Nation."

News reporter: No other screen drama has had the enduring fame of "The Birth of a Nation."

No other has boasted so many memorable performances.

Jeffries: D.W. Griffith releases "Birth of a Nation," which is America's first blockbuster.

It's a movie based on the book "The Klansmen," which is about most especially what happens in the aftermath of the Civil War, i.e.

Reconstruction.

O'Toole: They were getting it banned in Boston, and so D.W. Griffith went to the Supreme Court Chief Justice White, who was from Louisiana, and he came in and told him, "This tells the true story of Reconstruction."

And, of course, Woodrow Wilson was from Georgia.

He was president of the United States at the time.

He showed it in the White House.

First movie ever to be shown in the White House.

And Wilson supposedly said something to the effect of, "This is history written with lightning," or something like that.

But I think what they were saying was they felt like the general theme of reconciliation between Northerners and Southerners, at least the white Northerners and white Southerners at the end, was a message that they approved of.

♪ Hale: "Birth of a Nation" made people believe that the Klan saved the South.

It came out in 1915, and it swept the country, revitalizing the Ku Klux Klan.

So, just prior to the Atlanta premiere of "Birth of a Nation," the Klan was reborn on top of Stone Mountain.

And after that, there was a cross-burning every year on the mountain.

What's interesting to me is, "Birth of a Nation" did help start the Klan, but the carving effort was going on before.

Whose idea was it originally to have Confederate leaders on Stone Mountain?

It was an editor of a New York paper in 1914.

You can blame it on the Yankees, in other words?

It was a Yankee idea.

Oh, he was also a Southerner.

OK, I got it.

We're looking at a few documents now.

This one is from the Venable brothers.

Who were the Venable brothers?

They were the owners of Stone Mountain.

They operated a granite business.

The Venable family continued to own the mountain until 1958 when it was bought by the state of Georgia.

And at least some of them were members of the Ku Klux Klan?

That's right.

And they were integrally related to the Klan by giving them access to the mountain for as long as they owned the mountain.

So, what is this letter?

They're responding to the efforts of the United Daughters of the Confederacy to make the carving.

So, this one is interesting.

This is a letter from Gutzon Borglum, who's trying to get the gig.

He is the original sculptor of Stone Mountain.

That's correct.

He is the person who later carved Abraham Lincoln into Mount Rushmore, but he wants to get this engagement to carve Confederate leaders.

And here he is pitching himself, talking about how this is going to be monumental work, how "Had Egypt or Greece had something like this, no telling what they would've created."

He later joined the Ku Klux Klan.

Was that necessary to get the assignment, you think?

No, I think that was something-- he got the assignment, and then he worked his way into the Klan.

Now, this is from Helen Plane, who is running the Daughters of the Confederacy in Atlanta, leading the effort to get something carved on Stone Mountain.

What does she say in this letter?

Well, she has just seen "Birth of a Nation," and she's very excited about the activities of the Ku Klux Klan in that film.

And this is what she says.

She says, "'The Birth of a Nation' will give us a percentage of the next Monday's matinee."

They needed the money.

"Since seeing this wonderful and beautiful picture... Hale and Smith: "of Reconstruction in the South... Smith: "I feel that it is due the Ku Klux Klan, "which saved us from negro domination and carpet bag rule, that it might be immortalized on Stone Mountain."

"Why not represent a small group of them in their nightly uniform approaching in the distance?"

I felt when I saw this, heh heh, that this is one of the, you know, like, most overt and unapologetic explanations of what some of these Southern monuments are seeking to do, to--to activate a sense of the power and the rightness of forces of domination like the KKK.

And so, I wanted to do something that felt very frightening to me, which was to step into that voice and that perspective by way of a poem, and to extrapolate upon it.

You know, where-- what is the end game of a suggestion like that?

So this poem is called "A Suggestion."

Why not represent a small group of them in their nightly uniform approaching in the distance?

Why not represent a small group of us in our nightly uniform approaching in the distance?

Carve us there.

Let any who stand to fear the white tide of our rising.

Let them hide as we are forced to hide.

Let them wait for the end that awaits them-- shame, the whip, the rope and tree, police, policy.

And then, when again it is just us alone at the hearth of power, let us stoop to tend the countless gears of their comeuppance, though it be generations hence.

Lest they forget, why not represent a small group of us in our nightly uniform approaching in the distance?

That poem, it takes her--her language, and you move through the full scope of the intention, terror that, um, a white person in the vanquished South would be forced to live and see a rising status of--of Black citizenship, what she calls "negro domination."

That seems like an assault or an affront, something that--that needs to be staved off.

And maybe that's the experience that many of us are trying to describe of living with these monuments.

It's a very scary thing to live in a space that is whispering to you... "You don't belong.

You're not authorized."

There are forces that will roughly remind you of what you can and can't do.

♪ Vaughn: This is where they used to hold the Klan rallies.

All of this is overgrown now, but it was a clear path.

They could drive their vehicles onto the property, which was owned by James Venable.

Man: Mr. Venable, how much influence do you think the Klan has today in the political life in the South, sir?

Venable: The Klan in the South has a great political influence.

In fact, nationwide we have political influence, because we are fighting for the white race of this country.

Vaughn: When I was growing up, James Venable was the Grand Wizard that led the Ku Klux Klan.

Brown: Labor Day was the main day that the Klan had their event.

The Klan would go on the mountain.

And then, they would come back here, Shermantown.

♪ Me and my cousins, we would gather on the porch, and we would watch them go by.

Here, right here.

And only thing, the streets are now paved, but at that time, they were dirt.

And they'd just go from street to street, blowing their horns and kicking up dust.

♪ We saw the license plates, and we'd be saying, "That one's from such and such a place.

That one's from Georgia."

It was more from out of state than it was here.

And then, when they had the hoods on, we'd be saying, "Mr.

So and So got a car like that!"

And we'd be looking at them, trying to see if we know any of them.

Vaughn: As a child, I recognized the Klansmen.

They were faces that we had seen before within the city, walking downtown.

I remember seeing the chief of police up Stone Mountain as one of the Klansmen.

I recognized his face.

They may not have known me, but I knew them, so that was the thought in my head, "I know you.

I know who you are.

I know what you're doing."

Man: They may put on a cartoon on Saturday morning in front of your young child, who doesn't know right from wrong yet, and they'll place a white girl in there hugging with a ###### boy or vice versa.

Brown: You could just hear this, "Nigger, nigger, nigger," and, "I don't want you to go to school with this nigger, nigger, nigger."

We would hear several chants, but the main one that really stuck with me was, "Niggers, leave.

Niggers, get out."

And that's when we questioned our mom.

They wanted to put me out of my home.

We knew we were negro children, so that wasn't an issue, but why are they saying this?

I think they was doing it to make a point, that they was in control.

The Ku Klux, they did some bad, awful things.

That's what people read and hear about Stone Mountain is the Klan, but nobody never stopped to tell the good things that the Venables did for the Black community.

Williams: What's a little shocking is a lot of residents in Shermantown don't have problems with the KKK, specifically James Venable, because of what they perceive to be all of the good that he has done in the community.

We had a Black school, and it went until the eighth grade, given to the Black community by the Venables.

Hold that.

Hold.

James Venable was a lawyer, and this might be hard to some people to believe, but he, uh, represented a lot of Black people, too.

I believe that some of our older African Americans were conditioned to not say anything, to not use their voice to advocate for themselves.

You get this thing going here in a minute.

The white man's the ###### friend, if he just realizes.

We're against intermarriage.

We're against social equality.

As long as they stay in their own place, the Klan will never just hurt one of them.

Williams: I believe that a Klansman would donate to the Black community in an effort to downplay the real big, huge impact, negative impact, that they're having in the community.

[Birds chirping] What does it mean to have a plantation here at Stone Mountain?

Mosley: Some people just want to get away from it altogether, but then there are others who say, "Hey, this is where we came from.

"This is what we had to endure.

But now look where we are now."

It reminds me somewhat of my upbringing.

There was a house similar to this.

I worked out there all day long for a dollar and a half a day.

[Sighs] There's some things that, uh, I don't like to talk about, but, uh, I remember my father driving the cotton bus, so to speak.

And we came to a certain area not too far from here, you may see a Black person hanging from a tree.

Skin to the bone because the birds and things pick the flesh from the bone, and they're just hanging out there.

I've seen that and didn't say anything about it because that was the time that we were living in.

And it may not sound right.

Thank God it wasn't me, and I'm sorry for the one that it was.

[Indistinct chatter] Officer: Stay here.

You take a seat in that car.

Yes, sir.

In the car.

Yes, sir.

Yes, sir.

[Car engine revs] Officer 2: Stop moving.

Floyd: Stop.

I'm not gonna do nothing.

Put your arms behind your back, then.

I'm not gonna do nothing.

Face in the floor.

I'm claustrophobic.

I'm claustrophobic, man.

You're not working with me.

Lay on the ground.

On the ground.

Ahh!

My wrist!

Do it.

Ahh!

Ahh!

Ahh, I can't breathe, man.

Officer: OK.

Please.

All right.

Please, let me stand.

Collard: The George Floyd video?

I cried when I saw that man tortured and murdered.

That officer who had his knee on George Floyd's neck did not see George Floyd as a person.

So I'm a practicing attorney.

I was also a patrol officer.

Basically anything someone calls 911 about, that's what I would respond to.

And the experience opened my eyes to how the world really works.

I saw, firsthand, the inequality that exists.

And it really taught me a lesson.

[Cheering and applause] ♪ Very appropriately, policing and people of color is something that has resulted in a big national reckoning about race.

Man: They tell you to be peaceful.

They tell you to be non-violent.

But it wasn't non-violent for George Floyd when he was on that ground with that knee on his neck.

Jeffries: June of 2020, following the killing of George Floyd... [Indistinct chanting] following the killing of Breonna Taylor, following the murder of Ahmaud Arbery here in Georgia... All: Take your knee off our necks.

[Indistinct chanting] Jeffries: we see the largest protest in American history take place.

Man on megaphone: Wake up!

Wake up!

[Woman shouting indistinctly] Jeffries: People calling not only for justice for the victims of police violence, but they're also calling for the removal of these monuments to white supremacy.

Man: No justice!

Crowd: No peace!

No justice!

No peace!

No justice!

No peace!

No justice!

Collard: We saw this incredible social change happening, and we knew that we had to focus some of that energy towards Stone Mountain.

News reporter: Georgia law compels the Stone Mountain Memorial Association to maintain an appropriate and suitable memorial to the Confederacy, but the Stone Mountain Action Coalition believes that's open to interpretation.

Collard: The Stone Mountain Action Coalition started as a group of about 20 of us and has expanded to a membership of hundreds or thousands of people who have signed up on social media.

The primary goal is the transformation of Stone Mountain Park into a place that is welcoming to all people.

You can't have a conversation about racism, about civil unrest, about inequities without being focused on Confederate monuments.

So, they've got to come down.

[Crowd shouting] Jeffries: One by one, all of these Confederate monuments begin to be removed.

Because as long as they exist, as long as they occupy this public space, you're saying that this ideology of white supremacy, uh, is legitimate in some way, shape, or form, that this myth about the Lost Cause is somehow legitimate.

OK. Wheeler.

Oh, yeah, interesting guy.

They've got CSA, Confederate States of America, on the buckle, so, uh, he should come out.

Rubenstein: Now in the Congress of the United States, you've introduced a bill that would prohibit Confederate statues in the Capitol of the United States.

Is that bill going to pass?

I think it will.

And I think one of the reasons is because the states have made significant movement, and that is what's going to cause this to happen.

For instance, the state of Florida has already taken its Confederate general out of here.

Two other states have done the same thing, Arkansas and Virginia.

These are monumental things, and it lessens resistance, I think, here.

And so I think that, um, that bill is going to pass.

So, in, uh, Georgia, there's Stone Mountain.

And in Stone Mountain, there's a carved relief of Confederate leaders.

Sure.

Should we destroy the mountain, destroy the carvings, or we just say, we'll keep it there as a monument to the bad decisions that created that relief?

Well, I'll leave it up to the people of Georgia to deal with that.

♪ Vaughn: The last few years what I've observed is that people actually want that carving off.

They feel that it's an insult to Black people.

But my opinion, what's done has been done.

Brown: I would like for it to be presented different, and I think that they should explain the men on the carving and say what they did.

But since it's not presented different, I'll accept it just like it is, but I think the generations that come, say, behind me, they just won't--they won't stand for it.

Williams: I've not come to this park in decades.

I won't support this park in any way, shape, or form until significant changes are made.

This marker reads, "The vast majority of those who fought "and died for the Southern Confederacy "had little in worldly goods or comforts.

"They fought for a principle, "the right to live life in a chosen manner.

"This dedication to a cause drove them "to achieve a moment of greatness, which endures to this day."

What goes through my mind is just this sense of not belonging.

All of this represents a period of time when people thought that I was less than a whole human.

It brings about a sense of--of just despair.

O'Toole: I don't understand what the--the feeling is.

Heroes, monuments, memorials are supposed to find the positive aspects in people and raise those up for our emulation.

If you take Dr. King, for example, when I went into The King Center a couple of times, I've never seen any mention about his plagiarism.

We know from his best friend Reverend Ralph David Abernathy's autobiography that he cheated on his wife all the time, even though he was a minister.

That's not in The King Center, and it shouldn't be in The King Center because that's not the purpose of The King Center.

The purpose of these things is to find the best in people and emphasize that.

Collard: There's a problem here when we are still characterizing a group that rebelled against the United States as some sort of romanticized heroes.

I think that most people realize that the time has come for the Confederacy to get out of Stone Mountain Park.

As to the carving, if nature took its course, then it would wind up looking like a relic or a ruin.

Brown: What's going to happen with it?

I don't know.

I think--I think it's all being dumped in the new chairman of the board's, uh, lap.

[Choir singing faintly] ♪ Rubenstein: The current governor of Georgia appointed you to the Stone Mountain Memorial Association, is that correct?

Mosley: Yes.

And do you think that's because of the events of George Floyd and so forth, they thought it might be a good idea to have a Black person be the chairman of that association?

I would hope that wasn't the reason.

Our governor, he's my friend.

You know, and been friends for years, 40--for almost 40 years.

OK. And, uh, I was somewhat surprised but I was honored.

♪ It's an up ♪ ♪ Hill journey, but I'm trying to get home ♪ ♪ Trying to get home ♪ Rubenstein: So, as the preacher of your church in Athens, Georgia, when you became the head of the Stone Mountain Memorial Association, did some of your, uh, congregants say, "What are you doing that for?"

[Chuckles] I've got members saying, "I'm not coming back."

[Laughs] You know.

And they didn't come back?

I hadn't seen them, so.

Wow.

And my--but my thing is this, what are you coming for in the first place?

Amen.

Let the church say, "Amen."

Congregation: Amen.

Say, "Amen," again.

Rubenstein: What do you think about the effort to get rid of the carvings on Stone Mountain?

I don't see the carving being removed.

You're talking about 42 feet... deep in that rock.

Our plans are to move the Confederate flag at the base of the mountain.

We're planning on putting in an exhibit AT Memorial Hall telling the whole story about Stone Mountain.

I don't see pleasing everybody because you're not going to please everybody.

I would rather be at the table on the inside than be on the outside looking in.

Williams: In my opinion, Mosley is missing an opportunity.

Dragging your feet and really not showing that you have a true commitment to change is what we are seeing.

Collard: The park is losing millions of dollars because of the presence of the Confederacy.

So moving a few flags from here to there is not nearly enough to represent any sort of meaningful change.

The present conflict over Stone Mountain has not yet turned into a legal battle, but it may well.

The law that sets up the Stone Mountain Memorial Park says it's to honor the Confederacy.

Jeffries: The reason why these Confederate soldiers are etched into Stone Mountain is not because of their noble works of charity.

It's because they were willing to die for white supremacy.

That's what these are, not anything else.

♪ Rubenstein, voice-over: It's easy to forget the past, so monuments serve as a reminder of our history and our ideals.

But our collective memory is shaped by who is doing the history telling.

Stone Mountain's creators wanted to honor a revisionist legacy.

But we don't have to accept it.

The carvings on the side of this mountain don't represent what I believe are modern values.

The Confederacy was an effort to keep people enslaved.

But revisiting the darkest chapters in our history can be its own lesson.

♪ Announcer: Next time on "Iconic America"... Paul Goldberger: It represents determination, commitment to the future.

David Rubenstein: The Golden Gate Bridge is a potent symbol of America's ability to dream big.

John King: People said, "This is dangerous."

Denis Mulligan: There were over 2,000 lawsuits filed to stop the bridge.

Katherine Toy: We as Americans have the power and the ability and the talent to create marvels in this world.

Announcer: On the next "Iconic America."

♪ ♪ Announcer: Explore more about "Iconic America" at pbs.org/iconicamerica.

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