Confederate supporters outraged by planned MLK memorial at Stone Mountain, Georgia

By Patrick Hogan  |  October 13, 2015 | 2:23pm
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The Sons of Confederate Veterans are taking a bold stand against beloved civil rights leaders who has been dead for 47 years.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported the Georgia chapter of the group took a hard stance on Monday against a planned monument to Martin Luther King Jr. at Stone Mountain State Park, home to a well-known Confederate memorial carved into the cliff face of the mountain.

“The erection of monuments to anyone other than Confederate heroes in Stone Mountain Park is in contradistinction to the purpose for which the park exists and would make it a memorial to something different,” the group wrote in a statement on its website.

That might not be too shocking. What is a little surprising is that, when it doesn’t refer to “MLK,” the group’s statement refers to the celebrated civil rights leader and Georgia native as “Michael King.”

Who is Michael King? No further information was provided.

The new memorial is in response to debates over the summer over whether the government should operate a state park that lionizes people who fought to preserve institutional slavery in the South. Removing the memorial outright is a non-starter, with the Stone Mountain Memorial Association’s CEO telling the AJC they were “into additions and not subtractions.”

But the Sons of Confederate Veterans and other like-minded Southerners appear to dislike additions, too. A vocal minority on social media expressed their outrage over their “history” being “replaced”:

With all the outrage, you might think the government was sandblasting King’s face over Jefferson Davis’s. But no, they’re putting a tiny bell on top of him.

Apparently that is too much to ask.

 
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