Despite public anger and call for removal, the world’s largest Confederation monument was reopened just in time for the July 4th celebration.

Confederate “heroes” and slave owners, Gen. Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s nine-story high bass relief Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial – laser welcomes visitors this weekend (illuminating the carvings and telling the story of the Confederation) is still pending.

The mountain is a bad meeting place for the Ku Klux Klan who was reborn on it.

In 1915, the KKK was brought back to that mountain with a burning cross, and its carved defenders were card-carrying members of the hate group. After the mountain was completed, a “neo-Confederate theme park” appeared around the area, including a plantation house, a “Gone with the Wind” museum, according to a report from the Atlanta History Center, New York Times It was reported. According to the Times, KKK members have since gathered at Stone Mountain each year.

The opening has fueled Black Lives Matters protesters and human rights groups who have long wanted the monument to be destroyed.

“Here we are in the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement Atlanta, and we still have the world’s largest Confederation monument,” said Gerald Griggs, vice president of the Atlanta division of the NAACP civil rights group. daily mail. “It’s time for our state to move to the right of history.”

Stacey Abrams made a statement when she failed for the governor in 2017. tweets series call for detailing the history of the mountain and removing the relief.

“The removal of the Confederations’ reliefs has been a matter of controversy since the state bought property in 1958,” Abrams wrote. “2nd. The monument, paid by the founders of the KKK, had no purpose other than the celebration of racism, terrorism and division when carved in 1915.

“We should never celebrate those who defend slavery and try to destroy the Union,” he continued. “Confederation monuments belong not to the honor places in our state, but to museums that we can examine and consider this terrible history.”

Adding insult to injury, Stone Mountain’s population is over 78% African-Americans. US census – with only 18% of whites – and African Americans make up the majority of workers in and around the monument.