Chicago police open probe into large burning cross at park
A large, burning cross was discovered at a Chicago park, and police say 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. The Chicago Fire Department confirms the flaming object was a cross, and says officials put out the fire.
Chicago Police say there were no reports of injuries and that they are investigating the motive and circumstances around the “object on fire.”
Keinika Carlton, 43, was driving home from running errands with her daughter and mother-in-law when they saw the cross on fire. She says she felt a combination of shock, sadness, disgust, as well as curiosity.
“Is this a racial thing? Is this a religious thing?” she says. “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.”
Carlton estimates the cross was at least 6 feet (1.83 meters) tall. The experience was new to all of them, including Carlton’s mother-in-law, who grew up in Kentucky.
Carlton says as they slowed down to shoot a video of the flames, she saw around her other cars slowing down and people walking nearby, staring at the cross burning.
While the motive behind the burning cross is 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. 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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