Stone Mountain Klan, was commissioned to do the carving. Borglum abandoned the project in 1925 (and later went on to begin Mount Rushmore). The US Mint issued a 1925 Commemorative silver US half dollar, bearing the words "Stone Mountain", as part of a fundraiser for the monument. This was the largest issue of commemorative coins by the U.S. government up to that time. American sculptor Augustus Lukeman continued until 1928, when further work stopped for thirty years. In 1941 segregationist Governor Eugene Talmadge formed the Stone Mountain Memorial Association (SMMA) to continue work on the memorial, but the project was delayed once
Solon Borglum on observations and drawings he had made at the U.S. Mail stables in Cincinnati. In 1898 the Art Academy awarded Borglum a scholarship that allowed him to go to Paris, where he matriculated at the Académie Julian as a student of Denys Puech. He met leading sculptors Emmanuel Fremiet and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who gave him further encouragement. Borglum received a silver medal at the Exposition Universelle (1900) and another at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, NY Borglum moved to the Silvermine neighborhood of New Canaan, Connecticut, where he helped found the "Knockers Club" of artists. His brother, Gutzon, lived in