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Does white supremacy figure in Mount Rushmore's history?

Friday, July 3, 2020
By Jiyul Kim
YES

White supremacy figures in both the history of Mount Rushmore's site and the biography of Gutzon Borglum, the Idaho-born sculptor of the monument.

The U.S. deeded the region surrounding the monument to tribal leaders in an 1868 treaty, which Congress broke in 1877 after gold was discovered nearby. In 1980 the Supreme Court ruled the seizure was illegal. Tribes refused the $106 million awarded as compensation, and continue to protest.

Borglum was closely involved with a reborn Ku Klux Klan in 1915. Historians say he was eager to put his talents to work on a planned memorial to Confederate heroes at Georgia's Stone Mountain, which the Klan was supporting. "Whether this accorded with a racist world view, or if it was simply one way to bond with some of his patrons on the Stone Mountain project, is unclear," a PBS biography says.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
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