What is the symbolism behind the KKKs cross burning?
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said a burning cross symbolizes only the Ku Klux Klan’s century-long “reign of terror” against black communities. As an expression that’s intended only to cause fear, he reasoned, it’s a form of speech that deserves no Constitutional protection. 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 1866 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.” Scots used burning crosses as rallying symbols on their way to war, and, according to Joe Roy, a director at the Southern Poverty Law Center, crosses were set afire on Scottish hilltops to warn of enemy invasion. Thomas Dixon’s 1905 best-seller “The Clansman” called cross burning the “ancient symbol of an unconquered race of men.” Barry Black, a Klan leader w
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said a burning cross symbolizes only the Ku Klux Klan’s century-long “reign of terror” against black communities. As an expression that’s intended only to cause fear, he reasoned, it’s a form of speech that deserves no Constitutional protection. 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 1866 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.” Scots used burning crosses as rallying symbols on their way to war, and, according to Joe Roy, a director at the Southern Poverty Law Center, crosses were set afire on Scottish hilltops to warn of enemy invasion. Thomas Dixon’s 1905 best-seller “The Clansman” called cross burning the “ancient symbol of an unconquered race of men.” Barry Black, a Klan leader w
