The uncomfortable truth behind Mount Rushmore: carved by a Klan advocate

Gutzon Borglum’s KKK connections

The sculptor of Mount Rushmore learned his craft carving Confederate generals for the KKK.

Gutzon Borglum was no ordinary artist. He attended white supremacist rallies and wrote about Nordic superiority to Klan leaders. His first major project was a racist memorial in Georgia. Then he came to South Dakota.

Here’s what really happened, etched forever into the granite faces you can see at Mount Rushmore today.

Borglum already believed in white superiority

John Gutzon Borglum came to American art with big dreams and ugly ideas about race. Born in 1867 to Danish Mormon polygamists in Idaho Territory, he studied sculpture in Europe before making his name with a Lincoln bust that ended up in the U.S. Capitol by 1908.

But Borglum worried constantly about a “mongrel horde” taking over America and ruining what he called “Nordic purity.” He once said he wouldn’t trust nine out of ten Indians the way he’d trust just one white man. These weren’t throwaway comments but deep beliefs that would drive his most controversial work.

An elderly Confederate wanted the biggest memorial

Helen Plane sent Borglum a letter in 1915 that changed everything. The 85-year-old ran the Atlanta chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and had big plans for Stone Mountain.

She’d already talked Samuel Venable, who owned the mountain and belonged to the Klan, into giving up part of his land for a massive Confederate memorial. Plane needed an artist who could handle something this enormous.

Borglum’s Lincoln sculpture had made him famous, which led to this Confederate job. Plane wouldn’t even shake hands with the “Yankee” artist, but she needed his skills for the granite mountain outside Atlanta.

Plane demanded KKK figures on the mountain

Plane’s real plan came out in her letters to Borglum. She wrote directly: “I feel it is due to the KKK that saved us from Negro domination and carpetbag rule, that it be immortalized on Stone Mountain.”

This wasn’t a suggestion but clear instructions. Borglum said yes to putting a Ku Klux Klan altar right into his memorial design. The timing worked perfectly because D.W. Griffith’s movie “The Birth of a Nation” had just brought the Klan back to life in 1915, with their first big ceremony happening right on top of Stone Mountain.

Borglum threw himself into Klan meetings and committees

Borglum didn’t just take KKK money and walk away. He went to their rallies, sat on their committees, and by 1923 had joined something called the Koncilium, which was basically the Klan’s ruling council.

Other Klan members filled up the group that ran his Stone Mountain project and handled the money. Borglum saw the Klan’s network spread across the country as both a way to fund his work and a political movement that could change America.

He wasn’t just using them for business but really believed in what they stood for.

His best Klan friend later murdered someone

Borglum got close to D.C. Stephenson, the Grand Dragon who ran Klan operations in Indiana and six other states. They wrote letters back and forth where Borglum talked about “Anglo-Saxon traders” and complained about racial “cargo that has eaten into the very moral fiber of our race character.”

Stephenson sent Borglum a photo with the words “To my good friend Gutzon Borglum, with the greatest respect” written on it. The Mount Rushmore museum still shows that photo today. Stephenson would later be convicted of rape and murder, but back then he represented Klan power at its peak.

Borglum hoped the Klan would elect presidents

Borglum’s letters show he really thought the Klan could take over American politics. He wrote to a friend in New Jersey: “Is it true you joined the Ku Klux Klan? I hope so.

They’re a fine lot of fellows as far as I can learn and if they elect the next President, by gosh I’m going to join ’em.” This wasn’t just wishful thinking but real expectation that the Klan would put someone in the White House.

Borglum backed Stephenson’s choice for the top Klan job and thought the organization could remake American politics along white supremacist lines.

Lee’s head got finished with Klan money

The Stone Mountain work moved forward with Klan cash backing it. Robert E. Lee’s enormous head was finished and shown off on January 19, 1924, which was Lee’s birthday. Crowds came to see it.

Borglum figured out new ways to work, including a huge projector that could throw his designs onto the granite face so workers knew where to carve. The Klan put up a big chunk of the $250,000 they needed, along with federal money and special commemorative coins.

Borglum wanted to add Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson riding around the mountain with Confederate soldiers following behind them.

Klan leaders started fighting and everything fell apart

Success brought problems as different Klan leaders began fighting over money, control, and what the organization should do. Borglum’s demanding personality didn’t help because he wanted everything done his way and made enemies.

Some people blamed Borglum for getting mixed up in Klan politics when he should have stuck to carving. His perfectionist attitude and bossy behavior created fights that got worse when the money dried up because of all the Klan infighting.

The same organization that had made his grand vision possible was now tearing itself apart.

Borglum smashed his models and ran away

When they fired him in March 1925, Borglum grabbed an ax and destroyed his clay and plaster models rather than leave them behind. He smashed years of detailed work to pieces.

Authorities issued a warrant for his arrest, but friends warned him in time. With an angry group chasing after him, Borglum ran to North Carolina, where the governor refused to send him back to Georgia.

He had to abandon his biggest artistic project and could never return to Georgia, leaving behind only enemies and trouble from his Klan years.

They blasted away everything Borglum had carved

Borglum’s Stone Mountain work disappeared completely. In 1928, they used dynamite to blast Lee’s partially finished head right off the mountain, wiping out every trace of what the Klan sculptor had done.

Henry Augustus Lukeman took over with a totally different design, making sure nothing was left of Borglum’s KKK-funded vision. But Borglum kept the technical knowledge he’d gained: his methods for carving huge granite faces, his projection tricks, and his understanding of how to work on such a massive scale.

Stone Mountain’s failure became the foundation for Mount Rushmore’s success.

Mount Rushmore used techniques learned from KKK work

South Dakota historian Doane Robinson gave Borglum a chance to start over. The Mount Rushmore project began on October 4, 1927, with federal backing instead of Klan money.

Senator Peter Norbeck got the government to put up $1 million for the work. For fourteen years until he died in March 1941, Borglum used everything he’d learned while working for white supremacists to create America’s most famous presidential monument.

The techniques he’d developed for the Ku Klux Klan at Stone Mountain were now being used to carve the faces of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln into Mount Rushmore.

Visiting Mount Rushmore

Mount Rushmore National Memorial in Keystone, South Dakota, offers you direct access to Borglum’s controversial past through several key exhibits. The museum displays Stephenson’s actual letter to Borglum inscribed “To my good friend Gutzon Borglum, with the greatest respect.”

You can visit the Sculptor’s Studio where Borglum worked from 1939 to 1941 and see his original 1/12th scale plaster model used for measurements. The studio houses exhibits on carving techniques Borglum developed at Stone Mountain.

Walk the Presidential Trail to view the monument up close and access both the studio and Lincoln Borglum Visitor Center exhibits on construction history.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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