Stone Mountain and the KKK

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If you have taken any kind of history lesson or studied anything about African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement, you might have heard of the Ku Klux Klan (commonly abbreviated to the KKK). You might know them about the group of radicalists who wore white costumes, burned crosses, killed black people and hated anyone that wasn’t white. However, did you know that the KKK might have a relation with one of Georgia’s most fascinating landmarks. Did you know that Stone Mountain might be a symbol of white supremacy? In this paper, I will try to explore the relationship that might exist between Stone Mountain and the Ku Klux Klan.
Firstly, I will give a brief introduction to the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK was started in 1865 by a group of Confederate Army veterans as a social group. They took the Greek word “kyklos”, meaning circle, and the English word “clan” to come up with the name Ku Klux Klan. What started as a social group quickly gained followers to become a full-fledged terrorist group. The Ku Klux Klan believed that Caucasians were the ultimate race, and held a deep hatred towards blacks. They also held hatreds towards Jews, immigrants, and homosexuals, although these hatreds were not as prominent. To demonstrate this hatred, the KKK burned schools and churches, drove thousands of people from their own homes, and murdered anyone that was black or any whites that helped blacks.
One of the most iconic features of Stone Mountain is the carving that is carved into the side of it. The carving is much larger than it looks from the ground. The carving is massive, standing 90 by 190 feet, and recessed 42 feet into the mountain. The carving was so massive, that the sculptors working on the carving could go inside of a horse's mou...

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...n Protestant men to join. Simmons also designed the hooded uniform that the KKK wore. On November 25, 1915, Simmons and sixteen members of the "new" KKK, several of them part of the group that lynched Mary Phagan went to the top of Stone Mountain, burned a cross, and declared the official "rebirth" of the KKK
The Klan steadily grew during the years of World War I, but after the war in 1920, the KKK opened up and hundreds of thousands of people joined it. The Klan's main beliefs were the ideas of white supremacy, anti-Catholicism, anti-Semitism, and restriction on immigration. The Klan now had the most political power than it had seen in a while. The state governments of Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas included officials who were Klan members, and those governments were profoundly influenced by the Klan during the 1920s

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