ingram_atop_stone_mountain
Top of Stone Mountain, Stone Mountain, Georgia, 2006
Inspired by D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation and following Leo Frank’s conviction (and subsequent lynching) for Mary Phagan’s murder, William J. Simmons and the Knights of Mary Phagan inaugurated a second incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan on November 25, 1915, by burning a cross on top of Stone Mountain. Martin Luther King, Jr., included Stone Mountain in his “I Have a Dream” speech: “Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.”