Predominantly Black Armed Protesters March Through Confederate Memorial Park in Georgia

A predominantly Black group of heavily armed protesters marched through Stone Mountain Park near Atlanta on Saturday, calling for removal of the giant Confederate rock carving at the site that civil rights activists consider a monument to racism.

Video footage of the Independence Day rally posted on social media showed scores of demonstrators dressed in black – many in paramilitary-style clothing and all wearing face scarves – quietly parading several abreast down a sidewalk at the park.

Many of the protesters carried rifles, including military-type weapons, and some wore ammunition belts slung over their shoulders. Although African Americans appeared to account for the vast majority of the marchers, protesters of various races, men and women alike, were among the group.

One video clip showed a leader of the demonstrators, who was not identified, shouting into a loudspeaker in a challenge to white supremacists who historically have used Stone Mountain as a rallying spot of their own.

“I don’t see no white militia,” he declared. “We’re here. Where … you at? We’re in your house. Let’s go.”

John Bankhead, a spokesman for the Stone Mountain Memorial Association, said the protesters were peaceful and orderly.

“It’s a public park, a state park. We have these protests on both sides of the issue from time to time. We respect people’s First Amendment right,” Bankhead told NBC affiliate station WXIA-TV.

“We understand the sensitivities of the issue here at the park … so we respect that and allow them to come in as long as it’s peaceful, which it has been.”

Stone Mountain, which reopened for the holiday weekend following a weeks-long closure over the coronavirus, has faced renewed calls for its removal since the May 25 death of 👤George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, at the hands of Minneapolis police.