USA. Georgia. Stone Mountain Park. 23 January 2024.

The main attraction of Georgia’s most popular tourist destination, Stone Mountain Park, is the largest bas-relief artwork in the world.

The carving began in 1915 but wasn’t completed until 57 years later, in 1972. It depicts three Confederate leaders, Jefferson Davies, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. As one might expect, the carving is controversial. Some claim it as a military monument, while others (the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People among them) see it as “the largest shrine to white supremacy in the world.”

The site certainly has KKK associations. Several cross-burnings were held on the summit of the mountain until they were finally banned in 1962 and, when the carving was commissioned, the site was owned by James Venable, later to become an Imperial Wizard of the Klan. Even the artist, Gutzon Borglum, (who also carved the four president’s heads into Mount Rushmore) had questionable persuasions.