A Confederate heritage group is suing the Georgia Stone Mountain Memorial Association for allegedly failing to maintain an “appropriate and suitable memorial for the Confederacy” at Stone Mountain as required by law.

Stone Mountain Park has the world’s largest Confederate monument, a mural carved into rock depicting Confederacy President Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson. The park is located near Atlanta.

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The lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday in DeKalb Superior Court by the Georgia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, singles out a planned “truth-telling” museum at the park. The lawsuit states that the exhibit “is completely contrary to the purposes of the Georgia law for the Stone Mountain Memorial Park as designed by the people of Georgia through their representatives.”

The site has been criticized for years for its alleged glorification of the Confederacy, which the Stone Mountain Memorial Association has toned down in recent years by removing the carving from its logo and relocating a Confederate flag display.

The Stone Mountain Memorial Association selected Warner Museums to produce a more balanced view of the war and the history behind the carving. Stone Mountain Memorial Association CEO Bill Stephens said then that they intend to fulfill the law requiring it to be a Confederate monument.

“Warner’s proposed actions are clearly outside of the legislative mandate and legal responsibilities of the State of Georgia acting through the Stone Mountain Memorial Association,” the lawsuit states.

The Georgia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans said the planned exhibits do not honor the Confederacy, alleging they “assault its memory.”

“The memorial association should go by what the state law says, which they’re not doing,” Philip Autrey, a member of the heritage group and a plaintiff in the case, said.

The Georgia General Assembly allocated $11 million to renovate the park and add a museum to “tell the truth” of the park’s history in 2023. The park would detail its connections to the Ku Klux Klan and its resistance to the Civil Rights Movement.

The planned museum would include a section about organizations like the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who “materialized as promoters of Lost Cause ideology” in the 1890s.

OFFENSE IS NOT A VALID LEGAL ARGUMENT WITH MONUMENTS

“Lost Cause ideology” is the romanticization of the Confederacy after the Civil War. The museum would also include a section about how Confederate soldiers were glorified in the South while the participation of African Americans in the North’s victory was marginalized there. The heritage group dislikes the proposed changes to the park.

“What they’re attempting to do here is to redo the entire purpose of the park and actually spend their time trashing the Confederacy rather than memorializing it,” Martin O’Toole, spokesman for the state division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, said.