I believe this is in the tiny town of Beauregard (Lee County), Alabama, nothing to do with Atlanta at all.
I thought The Independent did better basic fact checking than this, but maybe I haven't read it in awhile. (And it does seem like a lot has happened there over the past years...)
Also, just a deeply sad story 💜
Even my community college American history class in 2002 (just an hour south of Atlanta) was chock full of Lost Cause nonsense.
I didn't even recognize it at the time since it was the same stuff my dad taught me. He was a really smart guy who read a lot of history and was particularly interested in the Civil War, so I didn't have a lot of reason to question things until later when I learned what the Lost Cause actually was.
It was always tied up in so many family stories too, and the idea of those 'damn yankees and carpet baggers", it was a part of my identity and history. It was just all around me, like the air, and so it was weird and kinda hard to unlearn that stuff, but not unwelcome.
I think maybe folks raised outside the south don't see all that stuff, how that culture permeates everything. Or maybe they think it's just a bunch of stupid rednecks who've never picked up a book, I'm never quite sure 😅
At least the more modern textbooks I've seen do a much better job at telling the proper story!