I seen it! From the Wikipedia: Stone Mountain.
Stone Mountain is a quartz monzonite dome monadnock in Georgia. If you care to learn what any of that means, geologically, I recommend the Wikipedia. If you need to be reminded that the word “monadnock” is funny, here’s that: Monadnock.
I’m pretty sure “quartz monzonite dome monadnock” means, roughly, “big, big rock.” Thing stands 1,686 feet high, and since it’s on reasonably flat ground, it looms pretty huge over the outskirts of Atlanta.
The rare fairy shrimp may breed on the mountain’s summit, but it may not if it is extinct, as many scientists now believe. In either case, “fairy shrimp” is a terrible name to call any of the mountain’s many school-aged tourists.
The chiefly notable thing about Stone Mountain, beyond its huge rock qualities and the debatable presence of fairy shrimp, is that it features the largest bas-relief sculpture in the world.
The subjects? Why, Confederate heroes Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee.
As a total yankee, my first reaction to seeing something like that falls somewhere between abject terror and sarcastic, holier-than-thou bemusement, especially when I read about how the Ku Klux Klan was revived at the base of Stone Mountain — before the bas-relief even started — in 1915.
Then I think about it more and try to write the whole thing off as history. The Civil War happened a long time ago now, and the sculpture was commissioned a long time ago too, even if it wasn’t finished until 1972 (!). While the men memorialized on the side of that rock fought on behalf of despicable things, I couldn’t exactly ask the people of Georgia to blow the whole thing up and erase it. Besides, as long as Andrew Jackson’s on the 20-dollar bill no one should pretend the U.S. is above commemorating guys who did atrocious things.
Then I go see the laser light and fireworks show projected on Stone Mountain on Saturday night and I just get really confused. The spectacle, mostly a tribute to Georgian music, includes a segment on the Civil War that glorifies Lee, Jackson and Davis and concludes with the trio apparently deciding its foolish to continue fighting and that unification is in the nation’s best interest. It’s a bit weird, especially since, you know, that’s not how it happened.
A few of my buddies were pretty freaked out by the whole affair, and I’ll grant that there’s something unsettling about flagrantly rewriting history in 100-foot tall laser beams.
But judging by the crowd, no one was there for a history lesson anyway, and the “Devil Went Down to Georgia” segment drew a way more enthusiastic reaction than the Civil War nonsense. Plus the whole thing ended, predictably, with a politically correct and syrupy-sweet laser-light tribute to patriotism and, of course, explosives.
And fighter pilots. A whole lot of fighter pilots.
It was a good show, really. They played Ray Charles and James Brown and OutKast. Like I said, it was a tribute to Georgian music. It just so happened to be projected on a monument to three leaders of the Confederacy. It sure didn’t seem like anyone in the crowd was there to foster hatred or forward revisionist history. They wanted to witness an awesome onslaught of lights and fireworks, and this huge rock provided a really striking natural amphitheater.
Things like Stone Mountain used to get me so upset. I don’t really know why they did, and I don’t really know why that stopped happening. Maybe I’m losing my edge.
Or maybe I’m coming to grips with the knowledge that inexplicably awful things are near-universal in history, ignoring them is dangerous, all the information anyone needs to inform an opinion on them is pretty readily available, and failing any better ideas, we might as well use their monuments for laser light spectaculars.
Tedquarters 
For what it’s worth I live in Georgia, and went to high school there (I’m also black and on my fathers side like 3-4 generations removed from slavery), and it’s really hard to explain but it’s just taught drastically differently down here. Not to the extent that they make it seem like Northerners/Lincoln were evil and Lee and etc were the hero’s, (well Lee is pretty much painted as a hero), but that it’s much less black and white and seen more as an issue over the power of the federal government vs the power of the states than it is an issue over slavery. I mean I don’t know maybe I’m just brainwashed to an extent, I mean I’ve lived most of my life knowing route 29 as Robert E Lee highway, but I’ve just never really seen Lee as someone who did atrocious things.
Yes, since the end of the war a contingent of the South has been been devoted to rewriting history – it was a “War of Northern Aggression” aimed at destroying a “way of life,” states rights, etc. The whitewash doesn’t hold water – southern states worked to build federal power at the expense of northern states when it suited them, and the way of life could not exist without slave labor- but I’d imagine not too many Southerners get a real education in that.
The sad thing is that there are a number of real Southern heroes, men who fought for the confederacy because of their home feeling, but also worked to end slavery. Those men get no big monuments. If the celebrators of the confederacy really wanted to distance themselves from slavery they could focus on those guys. That they don’t says a lot about just what it is they want to celebrate.
Plain and simple – racism is racism. I have family in GA and have been visiting since 1974 or so. I have been to Stone Mountain and couldn’t believe what I saw. We must always remember the pain caused by slavery and the treatment of African Americans in this country. To do less is to live in delusion.
Think about it this way. You are Jewish and while in Germany you go to the Nazi Memorial where they have etched in a mountainside the images of Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Ernst Röhm. You pay $10 to see a light show where they make the images of these guys come alive while playing snappy Kraftwerk tunes. This all builds to a white wash regarding the new Germany. IS this appropriate?