- Violence
- Segregation
- Nov. 25, 1915 to 1960
- DeKalb County
- Location approximate
The Klan reborn on Stone Mountain (1915)
On Thanksgiving night 1915 William J. Simmons and sixteen others burned a cross on top of Stone Mountain and proclaimed a new Ku Klux Klan. The Klan held rallies there for more than 40 years.
The record
Simmons timed the ceremony to the Atlanta opening of D. W. Griffith's 'The Birth of a Nation'. Several of the men also belonged to the Knights of Mary Phagan (NGE). The revived Klan claimed an estimated 5 million members nationally in the early 1920s; Georgia membership fell from about 156,000 in 1925 to 1,400 in 1930 (NGE). Quarry owner Samuel Venable, an active member, let the Klan meet on the mountain and granted it perpetual easements. The state began buying the mountain in 1958, a purchase the New Georgia Encyclopedia links to renewed interest in Confederate symbols after Brown v. Board. In 1960 Governor Ernest Vandiver had the property condemned to void Venable's easements.
Today: Stone Mountain Park, owned by the state; the Confederate carving was dedicated in 1970.