Qualla: Confederate Obelisk

Confederate Obelisk: Introduction

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JJonahJackalope, CC BY-SA 4.0. The cornerstone was laid on the day they buried Robert E. Lee. On October 15, 1870, as the defeated general's funeral procession wound through Lexington, Virginia, a crowd gathered in Atlanta's Oakland Cemetery to watch John Brown Gordon -- Confederate general, future Georgia governor -- deliver an oration over a block of granite that would anchor one of the South's earliest monuments to its Lost Cause. Sealed inside that cornerstone: a portrait of Lee, an 1862 Confederate flag, Confederate currency and stamps, a bullet, two gloves, and a membership roster of the Atlanta Ladies' Memorial Association. Four years later, the finished obelisk rose above the cemetery's Confederate section, inscribed with three words -- "OUR CONFEDERATE DEAD" -- and for a time it stood as the tallest structure in all of Atlanta.

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Image: JJonahJackalope | CC BY-SA 4.0

Confederate Obelisk: Six Thousand, Nine Hundred Graves

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit [ ChrisYunker], CC BY-SA 2.0. Oakland Cemetery is one of Atlanta's oldest and largest burial grounds, and its Confederate section holds the remains of over 6,900 soldiers -- most of them casualties of the brutal Atlanta campaign of 1864. Many died in the battles of Peachtree Creek, Ezra Church, and the Battle...

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Image: [ ChrisYunker] | CC BY-SA 2.0

Confederate Obelisk: Stone Mountain to Piedmont Park

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JJonahJackalope, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Confederate Obelisk does not stand alone. It belongs to a constellation of Confederate monuments scattered across Atlanta, each erected in the decades following the war as part of a broader movement to memorialize the Confederate cause. The Lion of the Confederacy, also in Oa...

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Image: JJonahJackalope | CC BY-SA 4.0

Confederate Obelisk: Contextual Markers and Their Critics

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jason Riedy from East Point, GA, USA, CC BY 2.0. The national reckoning over Confederate monuments reached Atlanta in August 2017, after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Mayor Kasim Reed assembled a committee to assess the city's Confederate memorials and recommend action. Georgia state law prohibited rem...

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Image: Jason Riedy from East Point, GA, USA | CC BY 2.0

Confederate Obelisk: Paint on Granite

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JJonahJackalope, CC BY-SA 4.0. The debate did not stay in committee rooms. On the night of May 28, 2020, during the protests that followed the killing of George Floyd, the Confederate Obelisk and the Lion were vandalized with spray paint. Over the following weeks in May and June 2020, the monuments were target...

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Image: JJonahJackalope | CC BY-SA 4.0