STONE MOUNTAIN – A bell tower honoring Martin Luther King Jr. could top the 825-foot mountain that the civil rights leader referenced in his “I Have a Dream” speech.

It won’t be the first literal tribute to King’s declaration: “Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.”

The sentiment already rings – occasionally, at least – in the nearby village of Stone Mountain.

For 15 years, a “Freedom Bell” alongside Main Street has paid tribute to King.

Before arriving here, the bell sang out from a church in an abandoned Pennsylvania coal-mining town.

Now, the nearly 150-year-old bell, which proved a bit too noisy for the village, sits quietly on a sidewalk and is rung loudly once a year on King’s birthday.

The bell was dedicated in 2000, just three years after the city of Stone Mountain elected its first black mayor, Chuck Burris, who has since died.

Paid for with privately raised funds, the memorial was erected to symbolize progress and to serve as a continued call for tolerance in a city whose name is more commonly associated with the revival of the Ku Klux Klan.

“When he said his iconic words, Stone Mountain was a very, very different place,” said Rep. Billy Mitchell, D-Stone Mountain, of King.

Still, the bell is about two miles away from the geographic spot that King referenced in his speech during the 1963 March on Washington.

Mitchell, vice mayor of the city when the memorial was dedicated, is proud of the bell and what it represents.

So when a 21-year-old gunman killed nine parishioners during a Bible study in Charleston in hopes of starting a race war, Mitchell thought the same sentiment was needed at Stone Mountain Park – the state park that is dedicated, by law, as a Confederate memorial.

Mitchell said his thinking had more to do with the high visibility of Confederate flags and symbols at the park –  famous for a massive, mountainside carving that features Confederate President Jefferson Davis, as well as Gens. Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee – than the literal meaning of King’s words.

Millions of people, representing a range of ethnicities, visit the park every year.

But Mitchell said he received a cold response when he had a chance to mention it to members of the King family. They feared the bell, in that setting, would no longer be a symbol of peace, rendering it instead as a “symbol of protest and anger and divisiveness,” he said.

Mitchell said, in his mind, that leaves one option: Remove the symbols of the Confederacy from the park. He expects the contentious issue to be debated in the upcoming legislative session.

“As we saw in South Carolina, miracles do happen,” he said, referring to a decision to remove the Confederate battle flag from its capitol grounds.

But for now, attention is focused more on whether a bell tower should be installed atop Stone Mountain, as the group that manages the park has said it plans to do. Details will be announced later this year, but the group also plans an exhibit on the black soldiers who fought in the Civil War.

The proposal has met fierce opposition from both a Confederate veterans group, as well as civil rights organizations including the very group that King started, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

The Georgia division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, in a statement, called the plan a “possible violation of the law” and said it would be as disrespectful as flying a Confederate battle flag over the King Center in Atlanta.

The SCLC doesn’t want a King monument intermingled with Confederate symbols.

Back in the village, shop owners, who see their own bell every day, embrace the idea of a new memorial – to a point.

To Hattie Lewis, owner of Hattie’s Dream Museum Boutique, a King memorial on top of Stone Mountain would bring balance to the state’s beloved monadnock.

But a bell tower, she said, feels like appeasement.

Considering King’s work to bring peace to all people throughout the world and his personal sacrifices, she said the Stone Mountain Memorial Association can do better. A full statue of King is more fitting, she said.

Joan Sharpe, owner of Sassy’s boutique, said she welcomes a tribute to King – as long as the symbols of the Confederacy are not “wiped out” at the park.

“If we’re not proud of our history, then we need to remember it and make our future better,” said Sharpe.

Roland Young, who helps out in his wife’s shop, Stone Mountain Café and Bakery, says a bell on the mountain would have greater visibility than the smaller tribute to King in the village.

But the proposal has left him pensive.

Ringing, he said, is muted when action doesn’t accompany the powerful symbol, and he thinks that sense of purpose is missing with many today, especially those in the younger generation.

He’s also unsettled by the messages sent by the Confederate flags and memorial carving at the state-owned, but privately managed, park.

Still, he said, trying to banish the Confederate battle flag is a futile endeavor as long as there are people who harbor the hatred it’s come to represent.

“You can’t legislate people’s hearts or their minds,” he said. “You cannot make people love other people. They have to say, ‘Hey, we are in this together.’”

Jill Nolin covers the Georgia Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach her at jnolin@cnhi.com.