Granite from Atlanta's Stone Mountain State Park may be used to help build a memorial in the nation's Capitol to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
When Dr. King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" Speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial four decades ago, he said “‘let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.”
Sunday, Congressman John Lewis joined a tour of Stone Mountain’s granite quarries to research the proposal.
In 1915, the Ku Klux Klan was revived on Stone Mountain and an enormous civil war monument on the park’s grounds bears the likenesses of Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis.
"We think that there should be a piece of Stone Mountain in the King Memorial. To be a p[art of the memorial. We really want to make that statement that we are helping freedom ring as he envisioned it. If the memorial will tell us what size stone they want, what shape, what finish, how they want it. We will cut it, polish it, and deliver it to the monument," said Curtis Branscome is CEO of the Stone Mountain Memorial Association.
The memorial to the slain civil rights leader will be located on the National Mall near the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials.
The memorial will require $100 million dollars to build, of which $81 million has been raised.
