The Atlanta City Council has passed a resolution which calls on Georgia’s governor to consider adding new faces alongside those already carved into the granite of Stone Mountain.
The 9-2 vote asks Gov. Nathan Deal to establish a committee to examine the possibility of adding famous Georgians such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or President Jimmy Carter to the rock, which currently bears the images of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
The resolution does not contain any language demanding the removal of the carvings already on the mountain, though Councilman Ivory Young spoke at length about his desire to see the current carving altered or removed entirely to end the glorification of what he referred to as terrorists, WSB-TV reports.
Atlanta NAACP President Richard Rose decries the presence of the Confederate president and generals on the rock as ’Government Sponsored Hate’ and wants to see all Confederate items inside Stone Mountain Park removed from public view.
Rose suggested to WSB-TV that the figures could be sandblasted off the rock or the entire section of the granite edifice be removed as one big slab. The figures were carved into the rock between 1923 and 1977 and are the largest bas-relief sculpture in the world.
Councilman Julian Bond told WSB-TV that he did not want to see the current carving disturbed, calling it a work of art.
Stone Mountain Park told WSB-TV that any changes to the park, including removal of Confederate symbols, would be at the discretion of the state legislature.
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