US park celebrating the pro-slavery Confederacy faces a reckoning

Stone Mountain Park in the US state of Georgia is facing changes, partly due to the park’s new Black chairman.

Stone Mountain Park, Georgia, United States – A state-owned park that hosts the world’s largest monument to the Confederacy – the failed rebellion by pro-slavery states that led to the American Civil War – is considering sweeping changes amid criticism and plummeting revenue that may have resulted from the controversy. Central to calls for change is a gigantic carving on the north face of Stone Mountain, about 25km (15.5 miles) northeast of Atlanta. Carved into solid rock, 122 metres (400 feet) above the ground, the work depicts three of the Confederacy’s most well-known figures riding together on horseback: Confederate President Jefferson Davis and two generals, Robert E Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, who led troops in a rebellion against the United States from 1861-1865 that cost the lives of an estimated 750,000 Americans.