My great-grandfather carved Mount Rushmore on sacred land. Now is the time to remove it.
On the 4th of July of our nation’s bicentennial, when I was 7, I went with my beloved grandmother to celebrate her father’s most notable work, one of the world’s most famous monuments, a landmark that had come to stand for America. My great-grandfather, Gutzon Borglum, carved Mount Rushmore. While heralded as a massive artistic achievement, there was criticism of the monument even when it was unveiled in the early 1940s.
There was also a grandfather and an uncle who chose not to join us because, I had inferred from hushed voices, they might have opposed the sculptor’s egomania, his lack of proportion, even to the questionable aesthetics of a man — capable of stunning bronze and marble statues — carving four presidents' faces into the side of a mountain.
Most important, family members and other critics spoke of violating sacred Native American land.
Through the decades there has been more talk, public opinion and documentaries revealing Borglum’s involvement with the Ku Klux Klan and hard evidence of white supremacy and anti-Semitism.
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/great-grandfather-carved-mount-rushmore-110007812.html