A large, burning cross was discovered at a Chicago park on Tuesday afternoon, and police said they are investigating how it ended up there and the motive behind it.
Video taken by a motorist shows the wooden cross engulfed in bright orange flames as it leans against a tree in Grant Park, a popular area near Lake Michigan.
Keinika Carlton, 43, was driving home from running errands with her daughter and mother-in-law when they saw the cross on fire. She said she felt a combination of shock, sadness, disgust, as well as curiosity.
“Is this a racial thing? Is this a religious thing?” she said. “As Black women, of course, our first thought is racial, because burning crosses are known to be used as a tactic, an act of violence toward Black Americans in the South.”
While the motive behind the burning cross was not immediately clear, cross burnings in the US have historically been seen as “symbols of hate” that are “inextricably intertwined with the history of the Ku Klux Klan,” according to a 2003 US Supreme Court decision written by the late Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.
The justices ruled that the First Amendment allows bans on cross burnings only when they are intended to intimidate because the action “is a particularly virulent form of intimidation.”
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