NAACP Wants Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial Removed, Not Sandblasted
The Claim
The NAACP wants the Confederate Memorial sandblasted off Stone Mountain, Georgia.
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Emerging story
Late this summer, social media users spread information that the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial is under attack. Users have repored that the NAACP, or National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, wants the monument sandblasted off the side of Stone Mountain. Users responded with virulence, including one long call to arms: “We need a show of force… The NAACP… have taken advantage of us for too long… Now it’s getting worse… Stone Mountain now, they want it blasted away.”
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar’s analysis found that the claim existed since at least 2015, and it is no more true now than it was then. The President of the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP, Richard Rose, told Politifact that the NAACP is only requesting removal of the carving and not destruction. As early as 2015, this complaint appeared on social media with similar imagery.
The NAACP issued a press release in 2018 in which they requested that the state of Georgia “remove all antebellum references and symbols at the park,” but at no time did they state “sandblasting.” So, while the means of removal are not accurate, the intent of removal is.
Many Confederate monuments, from General Robert E. Lee’s statue in Richmond, Virginia to Stonewall Jackson’s at the Virginia Military Institute have been moved from the public eye. NPR reports that over 150 symbols of the Confederate States of America were removed from various American cities in 2020. They also note that over 700 symbols remain on display.
