Cross burning.html



Cross burning or cross lighting is a practice widely associated with the Ku Klux Klan as a reminder of faith. In the early twentieth century, the Klan burnt Christian crosses on hillsides or near the homes of those they wished to intimidate, usually non-Caucasians.

Ku Klux Klan members at a cross burning in 2005.

History

In Scotland the "fiery cross", known as the Crann Tara, was used as a declaration of war. The sight of it commanded all clan members to rally to the defense of the area. On other occasions, a small burning cross would be carried from town to town. The practice is described in the novels and poetry of Sir Walter Scott. The most recent known use there was in 1745, during the Jacobite Rising,¹ over a century before the foundation of the Klan.

Though some members of the Klan were descended from immigrants from Scotland, there is no evidence to suggest that their ancestors brought this tradition with them to America.

The Reconstruction-era Klan did not burn crosses, but Thomas Dixon's 1902–1907 trilogy of novels portrayed a romanticized version of the Reconstruction Klan that did burn crosses (see The Clansman). Dixon may have based the idea on Scott's writing, or on other literary or historical sources. The 1915 movie The Birth of a Nation was based on two of Dixon's novels. Birth of a Nation quotes Dixon's novel The Clansman as saying:

In olden times when the Chieftain of our people summoned the clan on an errand of life and death, the Fiery Cross, extinguished in sacrificial blood, was sent by swift courier from village to village… The ancient symbol of an unconquered race of men.

Sign of the Ku Klux Klan

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In 1915, the same year Birth of a Nation was released, Leo Frank was lynched. Two months after his lynching, the lynchers burnt a cross. William J. Simmons, who founded the new Klan later in the same year, burned a cross at the mountaintop founding ceremony. Many of the participants in Simmons's ceremony were the same men who had helped to lynch Frank.

Many Christians consider it sacrilege to burn or otherwise destroy a cross. The Klan, however, states that it is not destroying the cross, but "lighting" it, as a symbol of the members' faith. [4]

Recent cases

Neal Chapman Coombs, 50, of Hastings, Fla., was recently charged with knowingly and willfully intimidating and interfering with right to fair housing² by threat of force and the use of fire and pleaded guilty to a racially-motivated civil rights crime involving a cross burning to prevent the purchase of a house by an African-American family. Coombs was sentenced to 14 months in prison in January, 2007.³ The United States Department of Justice believes that "cross burning remains a vicious symbol of hatred."⁴

Legal position in the United States

In Virginia v. Black (2003), the United States Supreme Court ruled that burning a cross at a Klan rally is protected by the First Amendment, but also held that a statute could constitutionally proscribe cross burning carried out with the intent to intimidate the target of the speech.

References

• Wade, Wyn Craig. The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America. New York: Simon and Schuster (1987).