- Before I came to America all I knew about the South
was what I saw in Gone With the Wind.
(explosion)
I fell asleep in the middle of the movie.
Apparently there was a huge Civil War
where lots of people died.
And 150 years later, proud Southern folks still celebrate
their side's heritage with flags and monuments.
The biggest remaining one is outside Atlanta.
Stone Mountain, featuring Confederates Jefferson Davis,
Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson.
And at night, they put on a sweet laser show.
Who wouldn't enjoy that?
Oh, right.
What's your problem with Stone Mountain?
- It is a monument literally to white supremacy.
Now there seems to be this notion of the Antebellum South
as a place of mint julips and fancy afternoons on the lawn.
But it was a harsh life for millions of people
held in chains.
- Well, they conveniently left that out of the laser show.
What gives?
For a more historical perspective, I spoke to an author
of 14 books about the South.
Why protect these monuments?
- Why destroy the monuments?
- People esteem these monuments that are a sign of past
where slavery existed and people find an offense to that.
- I mean, it's a shame, it really is
that our monument is associated with racism.
But who made the association?
- Probably those pesky slaves.
- I look up there and I see Jefferson Davis.
That was a man who adopted a little black orphan child
and raised him and secured his rights as a free person.
- That's a lovely thought.
Maybe these Confederate guys are just misunderstood.
Jefferson Davis adopted a black kid, so that's pretty cool.
Like Different Strokes.
- Well, no, not like Different Strokes.
These kinds of white washings of history help to make us
feel good but they're not accurate and they're dangerous.
- Like a lot of things in America today,
alternative facts can cloud the debate.
And that became clear when I sat down with one of the men
who's fighting to keep the Stone Mountain monument up.
People will say that the Civil War was about slavery.
- Oh, I know.
Some people do that and that's kind of funny
because it was not.
It was about independence.
Had the South not declared their independence,
there would have been no war.
- But the slaves were freed at the end of the war.
- Yes, it was a moot point by then.
- Not for the slaves.
- It was a moot point for the South in general.
- Yeah, but the slaves would have appreciated it.
- The war was about independence.
- Black people were oppressed back then.
You would agree that they were oppressed?
- Yeah, that's kind of an overused word.
- Wouldn't you say the word oppressed is overused?
- In what context?
In the context of people dragged from their home land,
forced to work a life of subservience
to people who didn't even view them as human?
- Yeah, that context.
- Then no.
- Stone Mountain Park is one of the most
visited parks on earth.
Walk out there under the carving and look at all the people
from Japan and Germany.
- Japan and Germany.
- Those are the most frequent people that come.
- And Italy.
Is there any monument on this planet
that you find offensive?
- Yes, lots of them.
There are monuments to Abraham Lincoln.
- You don't like Lincoln?
- No, he was a war criminal.
He was clearly a white supremacist
and he destroyed the South
and killed almost a million of his people,
which dwarfs the activity of Assad in Syria.
- Agree to disagree.
Was this just another American issue
that's hopelessly divided along racial lines?
To answer that, I sat down with a prominent Atlanta lawyer
whose ancestors fought for the Confederacy.
Why did the Civil War happen?
- The slavery was the driving issue.
- Finally, a white guy down here who believes the war
was about slavery.
- The people you're talking to like to say things
like it was about independence.
- Right.
- I think it's deceptive.
It is a refusal to face the facts of history.
- Ah, the unbiased truth from someone
without all the racist baggage.
- I'm totally opposed to interracial mixing.
It undoes 60,000 years of separate evolution.
I opposing mixing the races for thoughtful reasons
and I have to admit that there's an instinctive
revulsion about it.
- You know you're on TV, right?
Well, he may be a racist
but at least he has his facts straight.
Look, history is complicated and filled with shittiness
and pride can make people believe things
that just aren't true.
And when that's allowed to fester,
it has deadly consequences.
For Charlottesville and for all of us.
How do you get rid of this?
It's one thing to tear down a statue.
But something carved into a mountain,
how do you get rid of this?
- First of all, I don't think it's just
getting rid of the mountain.
I think there has to be a telling of our history
in the artifacts that are displayed out at Stone Mountain
that more accurately tell the story of Antebellum life,
including the viewpoints of Africans who were held
in slavery here.
- Another answer could have been dynamite.
- That'll work too.
(laughs)