Podbit · Empire: World History

373. The Dark Truth About Mount Rushmore

Explore episode Jul 1, 2026

History

373. The Dark Truth About Mount Rushmore · Jul 1, 2026 History

In November 1915, roughly 15 men climbed Stone Mountain after watching Birth of a Nation — a film that lionized the Ku Klux Klan — burned a 16-foot cross, and relaunched the defunct Klan as the Second KKK. Borglum was simultaneously working on a Confederate memorial on that same mountain, commissioned by a woman who described the Klan as 'the men who saved the South from Negro domination.'

Where this was said

Stone Mountain, Helen Plain, and the KKK Connection

At 30:40 · chapter starts 29:20

Two things happened in 1915 that would define how history judges Gutzon Borglum. First, he was invited to Atlanta to meet Helen Plain of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who wanted a portrait of Robert E. Lee carved into Stone Mountain — a granite mountain outside Atlanta that dwarfs Mount Rushmore. Borglum dismissed her proposal as 'putting a stamp on a barn door' and instead embraced the grander vision of a full Confederate memorial. Then, just months later, roughly 15 men climbed to the top of that same mountain after watching Birth of a Nation — the 1915 film that lionized the then-defunct Klan — burned a 16-foot cross, and relaunched the Ku Klux Klan as the Second KKK. The coincidence of time and place was not accidental: the Stone Mountain Confederate memorial project was deeply intertwined with the new Klan from its earliest days, with many members of the Stone Mountain Memorial Association being KKK members.

Putting a stamp on a barn door.

Matthew Davis

373. The Dark Truth About Mount Rushmore

History

Second KKK relaunched atop Stone Mountain in 1915

373. The Dark Truth About Mount Rushmore · Jul 1, 2026

In November 1915, approximately 15 men who had just watched the pro-Klan film Birth of a Nation climbed Stone Mountain, burned a 16-foot cross, and relaunched the KKK — initiating the Second KKK — at the very site where Borglum was commissioned to work.

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