The Confederate memorial at Stone Mountain, Georgia was completed in 1972. It was beneath this crag that the Ku Klux Klan was revived in 1915 AlamyA statue of Christopher Columbus, a 120ft-high carving on a Georgia mountain and a little-known sports commentator have been thrust into a cultural battle raging across America over how to interpret its untidy past. Cities are rushing to topple monuments honouring Confederate leaders after a statue of Robert E Lee, the commander of the slave-owning south in the Civil War, became a rallying point for white supremacists. Nearly two dozen cities from California to Maryland have carted away plaques and statues of rebel figures amid the backlash that followed violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, two weeks agoHowever, as campaigners took aim this week at a statue of Columbus, who treated natives poorly, or the huge likenesses of three Confederate leaders, some people wondered whether things…

Source: The Times August 25, 2017 23:00 UTC