By the late 1970s, the famed nearly 50-foot tall Cyclorama painting of the Battle of Atlanta during the Civil War was moldy, wet, and rotting in places and making its way toward a landfill somewhere. It had been donated to the city in 1898, after its debut in 1885, much of the novelty of the 360-foot moving circular portrait had worn off. And in the decades since, Atlanta, a city nearly destroyed in the aftermath of that same battle, could not quite decide what to do with it.
1939 would bring the world premiere of "Gone with the Wind," to Atlanta. The WPP boys had touched up and made some additions to the diorama several years prior, and after a quip by actor Clark Gable to then-Mayor William B. Hartsfield that the only thing missing from the portrait was him... Hartsfield and the painting curators added a pencil-thin mustache and Rhett Butler to the curio (which remains today).
But by the late 1970s, Atlanta had its first African-American Mayor Maynard Jackson was faced with the choice of junking or salvaging the aging painting, with loud voices calling for each option. Jackson, typically operating with a cooler head, chose to save the painting, raising $11 million from private donors to restore the diorama as well as upgrade the building housing it at Atlanta's Grant Park, outside the entrance to Zoo Atlanta.
Jackson knew that Atlanta school children by the busload would come to see the painting, be reminded of Atlanta's fall and the Union victory, as well as President Abraham Lincoln’s following re-election being central to their own freedom. And Jackson knew that history was true, compared to the final vestiges of Lost Cause mythology, still being taught in some Georgia classrooms.
More recently in 2011, the Atlanta History Center (AHC) came to the rescue of the Cyclorama when later Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed was no longer certain that owning and maintaining the diorama still benefitted the city. The AHC's masterful restoration has to be seen to be fully appreciated, as the History Center expended more than $ 35 million relocating, restoring, and producing the now incredible museum exhibit which surrounds and showcases the painting, part of a $75-million expansion of the History Center campus in Buckhead.
And now, the Atlanta History Center is entering the digital and film-making arenas, with the first in a planned series of documentary Originals, and the first, just-released Monument: The Untold Story of Stone Mountain. This incredibly well-produced film is broken into segments, in total just under 40 minutes long. The focus of the piece is on the times and motivation for the state purchase of Stone Mountain, and the later completion of the carving, originally begun during the 1920s, with threads of racism, the Klu Klux Klan, and resistance to integration as well as fighting the end of the Jim Crow era woven well into its fabric. The carving was completed and dedicated in 1970. (https://www.atlantahistorycenter.com/monument/)
Stone Mountain had been an Indian burial ground, and later a productive granite quarry, as well as a local tourist attraction, but following the state's purchase of the mountain and surrounding land in 1955, the intention was to make a bold, national statement, spelled out in old news footage in the documentary of then Georgia Governor Marvin Griffin. Stone Mountain would make for an attention-getting and permanent canvas, with the finished carving larger than Mount Rushmore, and begun by the same sculptor.
And without hushed tones or whispers, the Monument documentary brings forth footage of Klan rallies atop Stone Mountain, as well as words later enshrined in law and made in political stump speeches making more than uncomfortably clear that the original motivations for constructing the edifice might have been less than a pure memorial to those who died fighting for the Confederacy, there was a then present tense secondary message as well.
The Stone Mountain Memorial Association has been making a small but steady number of additions to the park, with a planned 'truth-telling' exhibit of its own planned for Memorial Hall, and overlooking that same carving. Much as Maynard Jackson had hoped, school children are expected to flock there, this time receiving a healthy dose of honesty and hard truths that will hopefully foster dialogues in the classroom, back home, and still later in communities across Georgia and the south. I am glad that the Atlanta History Center has started us down this path, and I know that the SMMA is only going to take that mission further in the years ahead. And that's a truth, as a proud southerner, that I hope we can all learn to become proud of together.
