Don't Do Racial Reconciliation Like This
A cross on top of Stone Mountain is not evangelism, it's historical erasure.
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On Thanksgiving eve in 1915, a group of white men ascended to the top of Stone Mountain, Georgia.
Etched on the front of the massive dome of rock were three figures sacred to Confederate lore: Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Gen. Robert E. Lee, and Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, each carved on horseback.
Atop the mountain, they performed a ceremony.
They built an altar and placed a U.S. flag, a Bible, and a sword on it.
They also erected a cross and lit it on fire.
This was the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan.
During the Jim Crow era, Klan membership reached into the millions. In 1925, they marched 50,000 strong down the streets of Washington, D.C. They became the face, rather, the white hoods of white supremacy.
More than a century later, I thought of that night when I ran across the story of a white man who carried a 75-pound wooden cross up Stone Mountain in broad daylight.
A Haunting Reminder of Hate
When I first stumbled on the news article and the picture that showed the man carrying the cross, I thought he was a white supremacist.
It seemed to me that carrying a cross to the top of that mountain was a clear and haunting example of the past echoing in the present.
Only this time, he didn’t need a hood nor the cover of night to conceal his actions. He could do it right out in the open.
Has racism truly become this publicly acceptable, I wondered?
Then the image grew even more confusing.
The white man—Joseph "Colt" Hamrick, a project manager for a roofing company in Macon, Georgia, and a father of two, baptized two weeks earlier—struggled to carry the cross all the way to the top of Stone Mountain.
Two passersby saw him faltering under its weight and offered to help him.
They were both Black men.
Immediately my mind went to Simon of Cyrene, the man of African descent who helped Jesus carry his cross when he stumbled (Matthew 27:32).
But a white man carrying a cross to the top of Stone Mountain was no Jesus figure. Why would these Black men be helping him?
Shaun Quiovers, who grew up in nearby Lithonia and has relatives who still refuse to set foot on Stone Mountain said,
"We can't continue to live in what used to be. We have to create our own narrative. If not, we're just a hamster on a wheel and we're going to get nowhere."
A Feel Good Story about Unity and Change
It turns out the white man was not on a mission of hate. He took Jesus’ words to take up your cross daily literally. So he climbed the mountain with these beams across his shoulders as an act of obedience and evangelism.
No malice intended.
The Black men saw him, and both being Christians and helpful fellows, thought it the right gesture to put the cross upon their shoulders as well.
The photographer, Jean Shiftin, who captured the event in real-time had been documenting the Confederate monument in photographs for years.
The award-winning photojournalist with 30 years of experience has documented Stone Mountain for a decade and published a book of those images, Rise Above: On Top of Stone Mountain.
Her photojournalism of Stone Mountain “presents the iconic site as a microcosm of human experience—where people of different cultures, ages and backgrounds come together.”
That’s a truly innovative and artistic use of the lens that can spur necessary dialogue about a how a place known for hate can become a site of cross-cultural exchange.
The the story that ended up in an article on CNN as well as the social media posts of the men involved story seemed to frame the episode as a feel good story of religion and reconciliation.
You cannot lay a cross on the birthplace of the Klan and call it reconciliation.
I read it as a tragic case of historical ignorance and an unwelcome redux of evangelical racial reconciliation, 1990s style.
Historical Ignorance Is No Excuse
First, it is inexcusable not to know the history of Stone Mountain, not just the Confederate imagery, but as the site of the Ku Klux Klan revivification in 1915.
Specifically, these men should have known about the burning cross that terrible night.
Cross burnings—which were not a tradition of the original Klan organized in 1866—became a most notorious symbol of racial terror.
Klan members and other white supremacists burned crosses on the lawns of civil rights activists. They burned crosses as hundreds of Klan members gathered in clandestine initiation ceremonies. They burned crosses to claim that their mission to defend and expand a racial hierarchy was divinely sanctioned by God.
In 2026, these men should have known better.
In fact, Hamrick claimed he did know. He just didn’t care.
“I don’t see people as Confederates, liberals or Republicans. The Devil’s greatest trick is to make us forget that we’re all brothers and sisters in Christ, and we’re all together in this.”
A burning cross was the last thing some Black families saw before they ran as refugees in their own country.
To restage a cross atop Stone Mountain without a word about that history is more like erasure than evangelism.
This is what happens when good intentions mix with historical amnesia.
Racial Reconciliation Redux
Second, the act itself reaches back to the evangelical racial reconciliation movement of the 1990s and beyond.
In those days, reconciliation was highlighted by grand symbolic gestures.
A white man washing a Black man’s feet as happened at the “Miracle in Memphis” when white and Black Pentecostals came together.
Hundreds of white men seeking out the Black men in their midst to embrace and apologize for racism in their hearts and with tears on their cheeks as happened at the Promise Keeper’s rally in Atlanta.
Carefully worded statements of repentance that acknowledged historic racial wrongs in the church as happened in 1995 when the Southern Baptist Convention finally lamented its proslavery origins in an official declaration.
The issue was not the actions themselves, it’s the way those actions distracted many from the real work of repair that racial reconciliation requires.
Reconciliation is not the starting line, it is the finish line. It is what you earn after truth, confession, repentance, and repair, in that order.
Too many churches and Christians stopped at the grand gesture. Not enough dug into the historical record to repent of specific wrongs. Not enough examined systems like policing and mass incarceration to take action on the racial disparities still present. Not enough were willing to sacrifice dollars or attendance numbers to firmly stand up for racial justice.
In the end, the evangelical racial reconciliation movement may have done as much harm as good since it left so many people of all races and ethnicities damaged and disillusioned.
Don’t Do Racial Reconciliation Like This
I thought of all this as I looked at photos of these three men—two Black and one white—carrying a giant wooden cross on their backs up Stone Mountain.
Their hearts were in the right place. We certainly need more acts of unity in this country, especially right now.
But we must learn the lessons of the past as we pursue true racial reconciliation.
Study the specific history of the place, the symbol, and the people you hope to reach, so your act of witness does not accidentally reenact an act of terror.
Tell the truth out loud. Name the harm plainly, in public, before you reach for the embrace. Reconciliation that cannot name the wound has not even begun.
Move from gesture to repair. Ask what a foot-washing or a cross-carry actually changes on Monday, then do that instead. Support the policy, back the candidate, fund the effort, return what was taken.
Stay for the long obedience. One event is an Instagram post. Real reconciliation is a practice sustained over years, measured by what is repaired, not by how one day felt.
These men are planning another event—this time on purpose.
It’s happening on August 8, though details are still forthcoming.
I hope they enter into it more thoughtfully. I hope they jettison any sense that the past doesn’t matter today and that the best way for people of different races to unite is to pretend that color doesn’t matter either.
While it is tempting, the route to reconciliation is not through minimizing the pain of the past or the deep racial divides that persist today.
The better path to unity in diversity is to acknowledge the harm done, reason together about how to repair it, and move forward on the basis of truth and mutual respect.
If reconciliation feels easy, you are doing it wrong. If it leaves you warm and fuzzy instead of raw and honest, you have not reached the wound yet.
Comfort is not the evidence of healing. It is often the proof you skipped it.
Don’t do racial reconciliation like this.
Repair first. Reconciliation second. Anyone who tells you the order can be reversed is selling you a photo op, not a future.
Racial reconciliation at Stone Mountain would look like an acknowledgment of the truth surrounding the monument and an apology for the continued racism of ongoing celebration—followed by blasting that carving off the side of the mountain.
https://stonemountainpark.com/activity/history-nature/memorial-carving/
As usual, your words remind me why I’m researching and writing the history of my community. “Reconciliation that cannot name the wound has not even begun.” Thank you, thank you for challenging me to find the path to naming the wound.