Stone Mountain: Carved in Contradiction

Lyrics

[Intro]You were just a mountain.Quartz monzonite.Rising 825 feet above the plain.Before they gave you a face.Three faces.[Verse 1]It started with a letter.Nineteen fifteen.Helen Plane wrote to Gutzon Borglum.She wanted a monument to last forever.For "the best blood of the South."That same October, on your summit,they burned their crosses.The Klan, reborn in the smell of pine torchesand the cool autumn air.They decided what your north face would say.[Chorus]Stone Mountain, you wear their faces like a scar.Jefferson Davis, Lee, and Stonewall Jackson.Three acres of granite hate, bigger than a football field.They carved their lost cause into your skin.And you just stand there.You just stand there in the Georgia sun.[Verse 2]Borglum started the work.Drills bit into your hard shoulder.Then he left in a fury, smashed his models.Lukeman tried, but the money ran out.For decades, you held their ghosts half-formed.Then, Walker Hancock, nineteen sixty-four.Just as the world was changing,he finished their dream with thermic jet torches.Governor Sanders called it a tribute to courage.While a different kind of courage marched on the streets.[Chorus]Stone Mountain, you wear their faces like a scar.Jefferson Davis, Lee, and Stonewall Jackson.Three acres of granite hate, bigger than a football field.They carved their lost cause into your skin.And you just stand there.You just stand there in the Georgia sun.[Bridge]But a man in Washington, in August of sixty-three,He spoke your name too.Martin Luther King, dreaming out loud.He said, "Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia."He saw you not as an ending,but a place a new song could start.A bell to be rung, not just a wall to stare at.[Outro]Today, families walk your 1.3-mile trail.They stand on your summit, look out at Atlanta.Do they see the scar?Do they hear the echo of the torch, or the dream?You don't say.You just hold the heat of the day.And wear their faces.