Stone Mountain Memorial Association

Confederate Memorial Carving

The project was greatly advanced by C. Helen Plane, a charter member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and first president and Honorary Life President of the Georgia State Division. After obtaining the approval of the Georgia UDC, she set up the UDC Stone Mountain Memorial Association in 1914, when she was 85 years old. She convinced Samuel Venable of the Venable Brothers Granite Company, an active Klan member and owner of the mountain, to deed one side of the mountain for the project. She chose the sculptorGutzon Borglum for the project and invited him to visit the mountain (although, despite his Ku Klux Klan involvement, she "would not shake his hand—he was, after all, a Yankee"). She met him at the Atlanta train station, took him to her family's summer home, Mont Rest, at the foot of the mountain, and introduced him to Samuel Venable,. Borglum also enlisted Luigi Del Bianco, whom he would also involve in Mount Rushmore.