![]() ![]() “ claiming Scottish ethnic origins, Southern Scottish Americans. While steadfastly asserting that the vast majority of Southerners who celebrate their Scottish ancestry aren’t motivated by race, these academics cannot and-for the most part-don’t ignore the emphasis that neo-Confederates and other right-wing extremists place on Celtic ancestry.Īt the very least, the relationship has provided a cultural escape hatch for many white Southerners. Scholars on both sides of the Atlantic have long noted the relationship between Scotland and the American South when it comes to history and myth. Our Lost Cause was built upon their Lost Cause. It is nothing new to say that the South’s highly successful effort to create a fictitious version of itself in a post-Appomattox world was consciously modeled after Scotland’s redefinition of itself after 1746, when its military quest for independence under the leadership of Bonnie Prince Charlie was abjectly crushed. With its massive bas relief carving of Confederate leaders, completed amid last-ditch fights to preserve segregation in Georgia, Stone Mountain is a monument to the Lost Cause-the myth that the Southern effort to dissolve the Union had many triggers, yet slavery somehow wasn’t one of them. ![]() Dixon described a guerilla battle to reassert white supremacy in the South, “led by the reincarnated souls of the Clansmen of Old Scotland.”īut there is more to this tale than a single case of theocratic arson. The popular 1905 work lionized the first iteration of the Ku Klux Klan and its reign of terror immediately following the Civil War. Griffith film, originally titled “The Clansman,” in turn was based on a book by North Carolina pastor Thomas Dixon. In fact, they were also imitating a much newer phenomenon-Hollywood and its silent movie Birth of a Nation. But those with the matches claimed to be emulating an ancient Scottish tradition. ![]() Neither Scotland nor mother Britain had anything to do with the mountaintop cross-burning. ( Leo Frank, a Jewish pencil factory manager convicted of a murdering a 13-year-old female employee, had been hanged by a white mob in Marietta only two months earlier.) ![]() On November 25, 1915, a flaming cross atop Stone Mountain announced the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan-a celebration of the reign of Jim Crow and a 20th century resurgence of lynching aimed primarily, but not entirely, at the Black sons, daughters, and grandchildren of former slaves in the South. Given that the state authority in charge of Stone Mountain has ordered up a retelling of the edifice’s history, the paradox is worth considering. And all will happen on the site of what is likely the most egregious corruption of Scottish history and culture ever to occur on this continent. With bagpipes, dance, athletics, and the serious perusal of souvenir stands, all will celebrate what they know of Scottish history and culture. After a few tipples too many, they will then swear upon their blessed mothers’ graves that haggis is naught but a superior version of the American meatloaf. Scores of men whose legs are well past their prime-and not a few women-will don kilts and tipple whisky. Never mind Covid this weekend will be no different. For nearly five decades, usually on the third weekend of the month, October has hosted the Stone Mountain Highland Games. ![]()
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