Talk:Mount Rushmore

I've replaced the following block of text from one of the paragraphs on the planning of the memorial:

The Lakota and other local indigenous communities objected to the overall plan as constituting desecration of their sacred lands, and to the racist and sometimes violent anti-indigenous policies of the four presidents depicted.^[1] For the Lakota and other tribes, the monument "came to epitomize the loss of their sacred lands and the injustices they've suffered under the U.S. government."^[2]

1. [1]

   Morton, Mary Caperton (September 3, 2020). "Mount Rushmore's Six Grandfathers and Four Presidents". Eos. 101. doi:10.1029/2020eo148456. ISSN 0096-3941. Retrieved February 24, 2023.
2. [2]

   "Native Americans and Mount Rushmore". PBS. Retrieved March 26, 2020.

I've replace the above text block with the following:

Although many Lakota and other Native Americans would come to oppose the Mount Rushmore statues as a desecration of their sacred land during the modern era of Native American civil rights movement, they did not openly protest the monument during at the time of its planning and construction. Indeed, Black Elk would visit the site during its construction in 1936.^[1]

1. [1]

   Ostler, Jeffrey (2010). The Lakotas and the Black Hills: The Struggle for Sacred Ground. New York: Penguin. p. 147. ISBN 978-0-14-311920-3.

In short, there is no good evidence that there was any stated opposition from the Lakota to the Mount Rushmore sculptures during the time when the memorial was planned and carved, nor anything prior to the modern (early 1970s onward) era of the Native American civil rights movement. There was a larger court case on the Pine Ridge Lakota's land claims on the Black Hills at that time, however, none of that case was specific to the Mount Rushmore project. I've looked in vain in secondary scholarly works and even primary news articles for any evidence of Native opposition during that time and have found nothing. On the other hand, in Ostler's book, there's a very clear statement that there was no open opposition to the project on the part of the Lakota during that era, and that book is a solid scholarly source on the history of the Black Hills land dispute.

As for PBS and Eos, those are news sources, and while those might be generally considered reliable sources, they are essentially tertiary sources and not as reliable on historical questions as scholarly books or journal articles that represent solid WP:Secondary sources on a topic. (Even though Eos carries a DOI number and is published by a professional body, it is not a peer-reviewed journal, but rather a newsletter.) While I do not wish to source-lawyer away a solid piece of historical research, it's pretty clear that these articles aren't solid pieces of research and pay fast-and-loose with anachronistically conflating contemporary Native opposition to the Mount Rushmore sculptures with those groups attitudes at the time.

Also on the topic of early opposition to the Mount Rushmore project, that brings up the topic of Cora Babbitt Johnson once again. When I do a Google Scholar search for work about her, it stands out how few good sources there are. Basically, it's almost entirely student research papers, including one PhD-level dissertation, none of which are quoted in any later scholarly writing. The only published sources that I could find on Cora Johnson were brief mentions in a very few books, Rex Alan Smith (1985) The Carving of Mount Rushmore and John Taliaferro (2002) Great White Fathers: The Story of the Obsessive Quest to Create Mount Rushmore, and maybe two other sources. I do see there's a Wikipedia article on her, largely based on a single Master's Thesis about her. By most objective standards, she's a figure of limited notability, and I'm surprised that those authors who have done graduate-level work about her never followed up with a book or at least a journal article. In any event, while I do think that there are historical figures who are unjustly overlooked and Cora Johnson might even be one of them, it's not the proper role of Wikipedia to re-establish historical notability - that's the role of secondary scholarship, which Wikipedia merely reflects.

Nonetheless, it would be good to have a paragraph or so on early opposition to the Mount Rushmore project, as can be gleaned from the above-mentioned books and perhaps a few other sources. Smith's Carving of Mount Rushmore mentions local "environmentalists" who opposed the project of whom Cora Johnson was merely the most vocal, and that the opposition was enough to potentially stall the project in its early stages. This is worth including.

Peter G Werner (talk) 18:26, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

I'm considering a change to this passage that might be controversial, so I wanted to get commentary on it first:

Borglum, who had involved himself with the Ku Klux Klan, one of the Stone Mountain memorial's funders, had been having disagreements with the Stone Mountain Memorial Association, and on September 24, 1924, travelled to South Dakota to meet Robinson.^[1][2]

1. [1]

   Michael Patrick Cullinane (2017). Theodore Roosevelt's Ghost: The History and Memory of an American Icon. LSU Press. ISBN 978-0-8071-6674-1. Retrieved January 11, 2024.
2. [2]

   "People & Events: The Carving of Stone Mountain". American Experience. PBS. Archived from the original on April 13, 2010. Retrieved March 17, 2010.

I'm wondering about the relevance of the clause "who had involved himself with the Ku Klux Klan". Borglum's involvement (and possibly membership in) with the KKK for several years is an issue that's relevant to the Gutzon Borglum article (if anything, I'd expand the treatment there to include more sources) and to the article on Stone Mountain, but his Klan involvement was something that played no role in support or opposition to the Mount Rushmore project. Borglum's falling out with the Stone Mountain Association and their accusations against him as being unreliable did play some part in opposition to the Mount Rushmore project, but the entire issue of his Klan affiliation or Stone Mountain as a Klan project was simply a non-issue with regard to then-contemporary views about the memorials.

On the other hand, I know that Borglum's often-racist views and Klan affiliation is quite important in modern and revisionist evaluations of the Mount Rushmore memorial and would be appropriate in a section on that topic. I don't want to seem like I'm trying to whitewash Borglum's historical reputation, but the sentence in question seems like a mere swipe and not appropriate to the topic of the section in which it appears. Peter G Werner (talk) 17:50, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

The second paragraph on the Mount Rushmore (Six Grandfathers) Wikipedia article I personally believe highlights why mentioning his affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan is important to highlight.

"The carving was the idea of Doane Robinson, South Dakota's state historian. Robinson originally wanted the sculpture to feature American West heroes, such as Lewis and Clark, their expedition guide Sacagawea, Oglala Lakota chief Red Cloud, Buffalo Bill Cody, and Oglala Lakota chief Crazy Horse. Borglum chose the four presidents instead."

I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to understand why a someone who affiliates himself with a hateful group wouldn't go with the original plan of having important Native Americans men and woman depicted within the carving, and rather opting to go with four American men; furthermore, paired with the fact that the land was taken illegally from the Sioux Tribe. I haven't seen anyone insinuating that Mount Rushmore is solely the outcome of a project by the KKK, but the mention of his affiliation is very important to this article and to understand why certain, poor choices were made. To say that racist ideologies and affiliations didn't affect the support for the carving of the statues I think is a misguided statement, as inherently Mount Rushmore was built off of racism, xenophobia, and genocide towards the Indigenous Peoples of the area, as the land was stolen and a sacred location was desecrated with no disregard. Meatball45 (talk) 20:45, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

All of which is an expressly ideological and WP:POV reason. That's not a good argument for including that statement where it's located. That might be an argument for discussing that issue under "Legacy" if an outside and notable source making that argument can be found, though. Peter G Werner (talk) 20:53, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

I agree, but I think the clause could be added to paragraph 6 of that sectionwhen discussing Borglum's decision to depict presidents "for Americans by Americans". Perhaps: "Borglum, who had previously involved himself with the Ku Klux Klan and the Stone Mountain project, rejected Robinson's original plan..." Petoskeystones (talk) 01:22, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

I completely agree. It seems entirely out of place and doesn’t add any information pertinent to understanding the history of Mt. Rushmore. The argument that it’s relevant to understanding how Mt. Rushmore “was built off racism” deserves to either not be mentioned in the descriptive part of the wikipedia page or should be placed in a separate page. I’m glad someone questioned the relevance because the flow of the page is definitely interrupted by it. ~2026-88779-5 (talk) 04:22, 9 February 2026 (UTC)