In Georgia, protesters march at monument to U.S. South’s pro-slavery past By Reuters

By Wealthy McKay

ATLANTA (Reuters) – Carrying indicators decrying “racist traitors,” a few hundred civil rights activists marched and chanted at Georgia’s Stone Mountain on Saturday to protest on the return of an annual celebration of the Confederacy.

The protest passed off on the foot of a towering monument to the heroes of the South’s pro-slavery previous, as 200 supporters of the state chapter of the Sons of Accomplice Veterans (SCV)gathered for its celebration, which it says honors the sacrifices of their forebears.

The Stone Mountain Memorial Affiliation, which runs a part of the sprawling park about 20 miles (32 km) northeast of Atlanta, canceled the gathering in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to the potential for violence on the occasion.

The celebration and protest passed off peacefully, with the 2 sides separated by fences and solely interacting via shouts. A large safety presence had been put in, with dozens of state and native police, together with SWAT groups with armored vans, and a circling police helicopter.

The Atlanta NAACP and different civil rights supporters tried to shout down the occasion, which it views as a salute to the South’s legacy of racism.

“We stand in opposition to the celebration of chattel slavery,” stated Gerald Griggs, state president of the NAACP, earlier than the march started. “We can not have fun the world’s largest monument to white supremacy.”

The occasion passed off on the foot of a 90-foot-tall (27.4-meter) bas-relief sculpture depicting three Accomplice leaders on horseback notched in Stone Mountain’s granite face.

Stone Mountain has lengthy held symbolism for white supremacists. The Ku Klux Klan, a hate group shaped by Accomplice Military veterans with a historical past of lynchings and terror in opposition to Black individuals, held its rebirth ceremony atop the mountain in 1915 with flaming crosses.

In recent times, tensions between the 2 sides “started to create a transparent and current hazard,” the affiliation stated in a press release. Even so, it stated it could let this 12 months’s occasion go forward and welcomed peaceable gatherings “from all quarters.”

Timothy Pilgrim, the Georgia Division Director of the Sons of Accomplice Veterans, spoke at the same time as protesters shouted over him with boos and obscenity-laced calls to “shut up.”

“We’re right here about heritage and historical past,” Pilgrim instructed Reuters earlier than the occasion. “This has nothing to do about race, we welcome all to our packages.”

Martin O’Toole, a SCV spokesman and keynote speaker on the occasion, can be a pacesetter within the Charles Martel Society, a self-avowed white nationalist group primarily based in Atlanta.

O’Toole stated the gathering honors those that fought within the 1861-65 American Civil Warfare on the Accomplice facet, which sought to secede from the Union to find out its personal future.

“The South remembers its useless,” O’Toole stated. “They had been the patriots of their day.”

Richard Rose, the NAACP’s Atlanta chapter president, stated he personally wished to see the pictures of Normal Robert E. Lee, Accomplice President Jefferson Davis, and Normal Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson faraway from the mountain.

He stated it was clear to him that the memorial service is a glorification of the pro-slavery trigger.

“We’ve to be there and stand in opposition to this,” Rose stated. “Silence provides consent they usually glorify a previous of chattel slavery and its horrendous violence in opposition to humanity.”