The 1960s Antebellum Plantation at Stone Mountain, Georgia

Abstract

Beginning in 1963, tourists yearning to experience the world of Gone with the Wind could finally visit the Old South outside Atlanta, Georgia. The Antebellum Plantation was one of the first attractions to open at the state’s new Stone Mountain Park, constructed around the world’s largest Confederate monument. But while the state of Georgia created the park and finished the memorial as part of its campaign against racial integration, it outsourced the plantation to private investors as a for-profit concession. Motivated by personal agendas, these citizens—led by Christie Bell Kennedy, founder of Stone Mountain Plantation Inc.—brought together vernacular historical buildings from across the state, transforming them to create a polished fantasy of White leisure. In The 1960s Antebellum Plantation at Stone Mountain, Georgia, Lydia Mattice Brandt and Philip Mills Herrington provide a careful examination of the history, architecture, and decoration of the Antebellum Plantation, still remarkably unchanged more than fifty years later. Their study reveals a fraught, ad hoc design process long disguised by the graceful big house at the center of the state-owned attraction.