Through a series of acts in that made the Klan's activities federal crimes, the federal government suppressed the Klan for a time. Klan members wore sheets over their heads to hide their identities, they raided homes at night, and practiced intimidation, threat, and violence. The organization was secret and attracted members to its elaborate ceremonies with its costumes, formal processions, and scripted liturgies.
The Klan was reborn in the s with the popularity of D. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation film which grossed millions of dollars and portrayed the Klan as the redeemers of the South in Reconstruction. Klan membership soared in the early s, but quickly dissipated after a series of sexual and financial scandals in its leadership.
In the film, Klan members chase and catch an African American man who had pursued a white woman, and ultimately lynch him in front of a burning cross. Shortly thereafter, a cross was burned in nearby Marietta, Georgia, to celebrate the lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory manager who had been accused of raping and killing a white Christian girl. As the Klan grew in numbers and influence, cross burning became an important ritual of group solidarity.
Crosses were burned not only at lynchings but also more generally to terrorize African Americans, Roman Catholics , Jews, and others hated by the Klan. As the Klan declined in the late s and s, intimidation became the primary but not exclusive use of the cross. During the civil rights era beginning in the s, white supremacists burned crosses to express opposition to desegregated schools, to frighten civil rights workers, and to show support in for the Republican presidential candidate, Richard M.
Nixon who declined the support. In addition, people with no Klan affiliation have burned crosses on the lawns of African Americans moving into all white neighborhoods. Since the s, a number of states, including Virginia, have passed laws banning cross burnings. The constitutionality of these laws did not reach the Supreme Court until the early s, and then, in slightly more than a decade, the Court issued two seminal rulings on the subject.
These decisions, R. Paul and Virginia v. Black , addressed the constitutionality of laws banning cross burnings and gave the Court a chance to discuss the role of the practice in U.
In Virginia v. As an expression that's intended only to cause fear, he reasoned, it's a form of speech that deserves no Constitutional protection.
How did a religious symbol become the ultimate form of hate-speech? University of Alabama professor Diane Roberts English claims that Klan cross burning emerged from Scottish influences. In an article she wrote for the Oxford American, English says the Klan, "founded in in Tennessee, may have been patterned after the mysterious Society of the Horseman's Word from eastern Scotland, as well as the Knight's Templar.
Thomas Dixon's best-seller "The Clansman" called cross burning the "ancient symbol of an unconquered race of men.
Barry Black, a Klan leader who is appealing his Virginia cross burning conviction has described cross burning as "a very sacred ritual. The American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan website also emphasizes a distinction between Klan-sanctioned cross lighting and illegal cross burning. Though the difference may carry legal significance, both spectacles remain a powerful expression of Klan values and a disturbing reminder of bigotry against blacks.
But is the Klan responsible for cross burning? Roy says while nearly 1, acts of cross burning were reported in the last 15 years, few were committed by card-carrying members of the KKK. Now the Supreme Court must decide upon the proper balance between freedom of speech and freedom from fear. Please include your full name, city, and state. Already a subscriber? Monitor journalism changes lives because we open that too-small box that most people think they live in.
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