The Mount Rushmore Monument as seen from the viewing plaza.
Sculptures of (left to right) George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln,
at Mount Rushmore, South Dakota. (Lakota Sioux name for the mountain: Six Grandfathers)
"And yet where in your history books is the tale, of the genocide basic to this country's birth..."
Buffy Sainte-Marie
Monuments tell a tale of history. The question is, whose history, and who is the teller?
Two of the largest monuments in the U.S. are graven images carved into the stone of mountainsides. There are few people who have never seen the iconic presidential images on Mount Rushmore.  
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed "Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia..." in his "I have a Dream" speech. His reference was deliberate, since he was speaking of the monument to white supremacy carved into the rock at the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial in Stone Mountain, Georgia.
Granite carving of Confederate leaders Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Stone Mountain, GA.
Granite carving of Confederate leaders Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson,
 Stone Mountain, GA.
No one ever taught me in school how Mount Rushmore and Stone Mountain are related. No one taught me that the original sculptor at Stone Mountain, Gutzon Borglum, who went on to carve Mt. Rushmore, was associated with the Ku Klux Klan, which used Stone Mountain and an altar designed by Borglum to stage their revival in 1915. No one taught me in school the history of violation of the Black Hills sacred spaces to carve out a monument to U.S. presidents who participated in the extermination of Native peoples and appropriation of their lands.