Why did klan burn crosses

L ooking eastward on a chilly Thanksgiving night in , residents of Atlanta were met with an unfamiliar sight. Fifteen miles away the barren summit of Stone Mountain was illuminated by flames rising high into the blackness.

The city, still reeling from a summer of anti-Semitic angst over the murder conviction and subsequent lynching of Jewish industrialist Leo Frank , would have been excused for thinking the giant burning cross was a work of Jewish retribution. In fact, it was the same violently anti-immigrant men who had committed the recent act of mob justice, and were now inaugurating the renewal of the Ku Klux Klan. It was the first time a burning cross had been used as a hate symbol in America.

But the formerly innocuous act would soon become one of the hallmarks of the Klan—enduringly equated with intimidation, fear, and violence in the South and beyond. On the mountaintop that night were fifteen men led by William Joseph Simmons , a failed medical student and army veteran who had been inspired by the popular new movie, The Birth of a Nation. Simmons and company, fresh from committing their own act of extrajudicial justice, adopted the flaming cross symbol.

Cross burning dates back to Medieval Europe, when Scottish clansmen would set fire to hillsides as a statement of military defiance or call to action for soldiers ahead of battle. Now, the KKK got a lot of inspiration from Scottish fraternities. And who says violence in cinema has no effect? Since then, cross burning has become nearly synonymous with the KKK—its primary purpose being that of intimidation.

But incorporating religious iconography can add a bit of mystery to menace. 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.

Women were especially active in the second Klan in the s, donning white uniforms and participating in elaborate parades for white solidarity. The practice dates back to 14th century Scotland, where tribes burned crosses as signaling devices. The modern use of cross burning is directly linked to a revival of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 20th century. An earlier version of the Klan, which was created by former Confederate officers to impede Reconstruction in the South and to terrorize newly freed slaves, did not burn crosses.

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.