Armed Black Panthers March Through Georgia, Declare War On ‘Rednecks’
According to video from the July fourth protest, scores of demonstrators dressed in black paramilitary clothing, and wearing face scarves like Islamic Jihadis demanded that the icon to southern heritage be torn down as it is a ‘symbol of racism.’
The protesters all carried rifles, including semi-automatic weapons, and some had Chewbacca stlye bullet-belts strapped across their shoulders. African-Americans were the bulk of the marchers, however there were people of various races.
One video clip showed a leader of the demonstrators, who could not be identified due to his obscured face, with an AR-15 across his knee, shouting into a loudspeaker in a challenge to white supremacists who historically have used Stone Mountain as a rallying spot of their own.
“I don’t see no white militia,” he declared. “We’re here. Where ... you at? We’re in your house. Let’s go.” And prompted the group to follow him, chanting ‘Let’s Go’ and ‘black lives matter.’
John Bankhead, a spokesman for the Stone Mountain Memorial Association, said the protesters were peaceful and orderly.
“It’s a public park, a state park. We have these protests on both sides of the issue from time to time. We respect people’s First Amendment right,” Bankhead told NBC News.
“We understand the sensitivities of the issue here at the park ... so we respect that and allow them to come in as long as it’s peaceful, which it has been.”
Stone Mountain, which reopened for the holiday weekend following a weeks-long closure over the coronavirus, has faced renewed calls for its removal since the May 25 death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, at the hands of Minneapolis police.
Floyd’s killing helped revive a long-simmering conflict between groups seeking to do away with Confederate statues and sculptures, which they see as pro-slavery symbols, and those who believe they honor the traditions and history of the Deep South.
Nine stories high and spanning the length of a football field, the bas-relief Stone Mountain sculpture carved into a granite wall overlooking the Georgia countryside some 25 miles (40 km) east of Atlanta remains the largest such monument to America’s Civil War Confederacy.
It features the likenesses of Jefferson Davis, who was president of the 11-state Confederacy, and two of his legendary generals, Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.
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