Stone Mountain can’t wait to celebrate on Saturday night. “This is our first one. And we want it to be a grand one.”
Elaine Vaughn calls the city’s first-ever Juneteenth event “a new birth for the city of Stone Mountain.” Her opinion should carry some weight, given she was born in the city 67 years ago – in the historic Shermantown neighborhood. She’s lived there ever since. “I really feel that Juneteenth gives us an opportunity to let go of that past. That 2.0 Jim Crow, whatever, let it go.”
That past is what still is for many outsiders – a current perception. Pictures and news clippings of the Ku Klux Klan marching through Stone Mountain’s streets and holding meetings in the city. That was decades ago, but the city’s white supremacy past has been hard to shake.
“It took a minute to really learn and see how deep the roots were, and how engrained it was,” says Chakira Johnson, Mayor Pro Tem of Stone Mountain. She moved from the Midwest to the city 18 years ago. In that time though, she says there’s been lots of change. “We’re not that negative history, and we’re actively trying to make sure people are aware that we are not that negative history.”
Lifetime resident Vaughn has that direct comparison to draw from. She remembers as a six-year-old, watching the KKK march right down the street in her neighborhood on Labor Day. “The torches burning, the hoods, the shouting of racial slurs, riding down our street. If we were outside, our mom would say, ‘ok, it’s time to come in.’ We come in, we eat our dinner, we’re going to be quiet, and we sit there and we be quiet. They didn’t bother us. It’s like they did their little parade and they went on.”
She acknowledges the current controversy that sits just down the road from the city of Stone Mountain – what’s happening at Stone Mountain Park, and conversations over Confederate imagery there. To that, Vaughn says, “the carving is not who I am, and the Confederacy flags are not who I am. I know who I am.”
Stone Mountain’s population is now more than three-quarters Black. And the city has been trying to reinvent itself over these last many years – including within its business district. Karen Patton owns Sweet Potato Café in town. Of the city’s past, she says “this is something that we’ve been trying to overcome. Even for us, being in business here, and even though you have a large amount of Black owners here, it’s still something that we have to try to get over.”
That’s why Patton too, calls Stone Mountain’s Juneteenth celebration a big deal. “Hopefully it will put a different light on this city.”
Mayor Pro Tem Johnson says because every branch of her family tree has direct ties to slaves, Juneteenth is “very passionate for me, it’s very personal to me, and it’s driven me to make sure we can do this here in my adopted community.”
For Patton? “I’m a descendant of Frederick Douglas. I know how he fought. I know how he struggled, and so many others did the same thing. So yeah, it is a celebration.”
Stone Mountain’s Juneteenth Saturday night party will take place along the city’s main street – to include all kinds of events, from a local choir and other music, speeches, honoring the late John Lewis, and so much more.
Ms. Elaine Vaughn sums it up: “To have this event where we celebrate with laughter, dancing. I can only imagine what ancestors before felt when they heard they were free.”