Monumental Discourse: The Narratives on Display at Stone Mountain Park, Georgia

Abstract

While the desire to memorialize the past is quite common, the motivations behind many memorials are not necessarily self-evident. Often � whether intentional or not � the memorialization of the past is a platform for the creation of collective identity, and frequently these arise out of conflicting identities and sometimes even racism. Stone Mountain Park in Georgia � containing the world�s largest relief carving as well as three museums dedicated to the pre-Civil War South, the carving, and the geology of the area � is one such memorial. However, rather than focusing on the historical context in which the memorial was created, for this study I used content analysis to examine the current narratives being presented by the park and the Georgia Department of Economic Development�s Visitors Information Center (VIC) located on Interstate 20 at the Georgia/Alabama border to understand in what ways the park is being represented and what contribution these representations make to Southern identities. I began with a visit to the VIC to collect all pertinent ephemera regarding Stone Mountain Park and proceeded to the park and its museums in order to collect the necessary data for coding and content analysis. The findings of this analysis show first a lack of congruity between the advertising ephemera and the presentations within the museums. But, more importantly, the findings show that the current narratives being presented currently at Stone Mountain Park do in fact still preserve the racial order established during the pre-Civil War South � an order which has been entrenched as part of the primary Southern identity since that time and continued through the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.