'Soul Fest' concert organizers blasted for using park with massive Confederate sculpture as venue

A music festival dubbed "Soul Fest" that features Black bands is being held in a Georgia park central to Ku Klux Klan history and with a background of a massive carving of Confederate leaders.

Civil rights groups have hit out at the venue for the concert series – Stone Mountain Park, outside Atlanta, where the Klan marked its rebirth in 1915. A sculpture of Gen. Robert E. Lee, Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson is the largest Confederate carving ever made, Fox 5 reported.

The concert series is a way to "normalize and sanitize" the racist history of the park, said Atlanta NAACP President Richard Rose.

"They're saying, ‘This is OK. Get used to it. It's cool,'" he told Fox 5.

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Rose said he asked two bands to withdraw from the show, but they refused, telling him that their music brings people together.

"The music can't bring people together in front of this icon of the Confederacy," he said.

According to Southern Poverty Law Center researcher Rivka Maizlish, the concert series is a "bad faith effort" to distance the park from the Confederacy.

"It's an effort to pretend that the park is for everyone while still maintaining this massive symbol of white supremacy," she said.

Emails sent to the park and its management company, Thrive Attractions, by Fox 5 did not get an immediate response.