Nathan Deal to remove вЂњsymbols of hateвЂќ from all state properties, including Stone Mountain.ДЄs cities across the country wrestled with whether Confederate tributes should stay or go, Charlottesville cranked up the volume.

Investigators later discovered his website filled with racist rantings and photos of him with Confederate flags and other symbols embraced by his kind.ДЄfter the massacre, Rose, speaking on behalf of AtlantaвЂ™s NAACP, and Charles Steele, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), called on Georgia Gov. Then, as worshippers closed their eyes to pray, he executed those around him, killing nine in all. Two summers ago, 21-year-old Dylann Roof joined an evening Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. вЂњAfter the killings at Emanuel Church in Charleston, it finally crystallized for me that these monuments encourage violence and validate oppression.вЂќ вЂњThey donвЂ™t understand that itвЂ™s based on white supremacy because the war was based on white supremacy, and the вЂheroesвЂ™ are based on white supremacy. вЂњI donвЂ™t think people understand the objective and the intent,вЂќ he said in a phone interview. Such tributes to the Confederacy have haunted him all his life. President of the Atlanta chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Rose grew up in the civil rights movement, the вЂњwhites onlyвЂќ times. Stone MountainвЂ™s first sculptor, Gutzon Borglum. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.вЂќДЄlthough the monument is protected by state law, Rose says it needs to go. вЂњThe people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. вЂњIf you read the declaration of secession for those states, they make it clear in the first paragraph, even the second sentence, why they wanted to secede from the union.вЂќ Activist Richard Rose sees it as вЂњthe largest shrine to white supremacy in the history of the world.вЂќ Some see the carving as a memorial to rebel heroes and those who fought and died defending the Southern way of life. Jefferson DavisвЂ™ nose is the size of a sofa.

So big, a stonecutter could duck out of a downpour inside a horseвЂ™s mouth. Stone Mountain is the Mount Rushmore of the Confederacy, only bigger. These leaders of the Southern rebellion against the United States sit astride their steeds, hats over their hearts, on a three-acre backdrop etched into the mountainside. Forty stories above ground, front and center on the gunmetal-gray face of the stone, is the largest bas-relief carving on the planet, a Civil War memorial to Jefferson Davis, Robert E. This anomalous, igneous dome east of Atlanta is the centerpiece of a state park that draws 4 million visitors a year. Staggeringly steep, nearly five times as high as Niagara Falls, it rises from GeorgiaвЂ™s wooded landscape like a rogue wave. From its north side, Stone Mountain is a formidable sight.

Stone mountain