Video of the Week: The Painful History of a Confederate Monument Tells Itself

Field of Vision - Graven Image from Field of Vision on Vimeo.

The history of a single monument is writ large in Pettengill's new short film, Graven Image, produced by Field of Vision and premiering on The Atlantic today. The documentary relies solely on archival record to tell the story of Georgia’s Stone Mountain monument, which depicts Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis engraved in the mountain face. Originally conceived of by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1912, Stone Mountain was chosen as the site of the rebirth of the KKK in 1915. Although it was shelved during the Great Depression, it was later revitalized in the wake of the seminal Brown vs. Board of Education desegregation case, and finally completed in 1970. In 2001, Georgia state law passed a mandate that the monument never be removed or altered.