Plato Tracy Durham, Methodist minister and educator, was born 9 September 1873, in Shelby, North Carolina, and died 10 February 1930, in Atlanta, Georgia. He was a first lieutenant in the Spanish-American War, a founder of the Christian Council of Atlanta, a participant in several inter-racial committees in the South, first dean of the Candler School of Theology of Emory University (1914-1918), and the negotiator of a settlement between the Stone Mountain Confederate Monumental Association and the Venable family regarding the sculpting of Stone Mountain.