Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp Selects First Black Man to be ‘Overseer’ of World’s Largest Confederate Monument, Umm OK.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has put Rev. Abraham Mosely in charge of Stone Mountain Park, the largest Confederate monument in the United States.

Rev. Mosely, a community advocate and pastor from Athens was sworn in as the new chairman of the Stone Mountain Memorial Association’s Board of Directors. He is the first Black man to hold the position in the state authority’s 60-year history.

Rev. Mosely takes the position at a time where many Confederate monuments in the South are being torn down by protestors or taken down and moved to museums by city and state lawmakers.

Mosely told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution he will take a measured approach and will do all he can to “move the ball forward.”

“Certainly, there are mounting problems that have been brought before us. But we’ve got to handle them one at a time,” Mosley told the AJC. “We’ve got to be patient. I don’t want to be the man who prayed, ‘Lord, give me patience, but give it to me right now.’”

The park celebrates the Confederacy. In addition to the giant carvings of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson, the park is home to streets and buildings that pay tribute to the group.

Mosely told WSB-TV in Atlanta he expects the position to be a challenging process.

Many have called for the monument to be sandblasted and destroyed, however, the DeKalb County NAACP said in 2018 that it did not advocate for sandblasting the mine because it would cost too much. Instead, the organization asked for the park to cease all references to Stone Mountain Park as a memorial to the Confederacy; modify the historic square, so that it does not refer to a plantation; remove all antebellum references and symbols at the park and change the names of all the streets named for Confederates.