Editing Cross burning (section)

==''The Birth of a Nation''==
[[File:Birth of a Nation theatrical poster.jpg|thumb|347x347px|The [[poster]] of [[The Birth of a Nation|''The Birth of a Nation'']] which features a Klansman holding a burning cross while on a horse.]]
In [[D. W. Griffith|D.W. Griffith]]'s film ''[[The Birth of a Nation]]'' (1915), an adaptation of Thomas Dixon's novel, ''The Clansman'', two sequences depict cross-burnings.

The first sequence depicts a [[Confederate States of America|Confederate]] colonel's little sister, who rejects a marriage proposal by a Black captain (of the [[Reconstruction Era#Military Reconstruction|occupying Union force]]) and flees after he chases her (the [[Piedmont, South Carolina]] legislature had legalized interracial marriages, and the story imagines the social chaos that whites feared would develop). She is cornered at the edge of a cliff and threatens to jump off the cliff unless he stops. He continues his pursuit, and she jumps.

Her brother finds her dying at the bottom of the cliff and holds her in his arms; she identifies her attacker before she passes away. The few members of the local clan burn a small (around {{convert|8|in|cm|disp=sqbr}}) cross, drenched in the young girl's blood. A [[kangaroo court]] is [[vigilante justice|convened]], hears [[hearsay|the girl's dying words when the colonel gives his testimony]], finds the captain guilty of [[murder]], and [[lynching|executes]] him. The clan members [[death threat|place his body on the front porch]] of the South Carolina governor's mansion with a square piece of white sheeting with the initials KKK.

The second sequence depicts the aftermath of two [[home invasion]]s. The first home invasion occurs at the governor's mansion. A [[Reconstruction era#African American officeholders|Black member of the South Carolina legislature]] proposes marriage to the governor's daughter and, when she rejects his proposal, he threatens her with weapons. The governor attempts to intervene but his attempt fails and he is taken captive. The second home invasion occurs at the house of the Confederate colonel; his mother was revealed to be a clan sympathizer and she expressed her sympathy for the clan by making clan uniforms. The clan wishes to intervene in these [[hostage]] situations but it is prevented from doing so by the occupying Union troops. The colonel requests help by burning a cross in the daytime; the black smoke which is produced by the burning cross signals clans from neighboring counties to come to their aid and contest the Union military's control of the town. Each clan wears distinct head-dresses and robes. They greet each other with their faces uncovered although they ride into town with sheeting over their faces. The colonel's uniform has two adjacent square crosses on his robe, presumably from the original clan in Scotland.

In the United States, the first recorded cross burning occurred on November 25, 1915, ten months after the debut of ''The Birth of a Nation'', when a group of men which led by [[William Joseph Simmons|William J. Simmons]] burned a cross atop [[Stone Mountain]], Georgia, inaugurating the revival of the Ku Klux Klan. The event was attended by 15 charter members and a few aging former members of the original Klan.<ref name="time">{{cite news|title=The Various Shady Lives of the Ku Klux Klan|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,898581,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080819190502/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,898581,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=August 19, 2008|work=[[Time magazine]]|quote=An itinerant Methodist preacher named William Joseph Simmons started up the Klan again in Atlanta in 1915. Simmons, an ascetic-looking man, was a fetishist on fraternal organizations. He was already a "colonel" in the Woodmen of the World, but he decided to build an organization all his own. He was an effective speaker, with an affinity for alliteration; he had preached on "Women, Weddings and Wives," "Red Heads, Dead Heads and No Heads," and the "Kinship of Kourtship and Kissing." On Thanksgiving Eve 1915, Simmons took 15 friends to the top of Stone Mountain, near Atlanta, built an altar on which he placed an American flag, a Bible and an unsheathed sword, set fire to a crude wooden cross, muttered a few incantations about a "practical fraternity among men," and declared himself Imperial Wizard of the Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.|date=April 9, 1965}}</ref>

Crosses were burned during the [[Tallahassee bus boycott]] of 1956.<ref>"Tallahassee Bus Boycott Timeline", ''Tallahassee Democrat'', May 21, 2006, {{cite web |url=http://archive.tallahassee.com/legacy/special/boycott/timeline.html |title=Tallahassee Democrat - Tallahassee Bus Boycott Anniversary |access-date=2015-06-05 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150128060425/http://archive.tallahassee.com/legacy/special/boycott/timeline.html |archive-date=2015-01-28 }}, retrieved 6/4/2025.</ref>

According to journalist and civil rights advocate [[Carey McWilliams (journalist)|Carey McWilliams]], in California during the '30s, several crosses were burned as part of the intimidation practices of the [[Vigilante|vigilante groups]] which were organized to break off pickers' strikes by the Associated Farmers.<ref>McWilliams, Carey (Author), Sackman  Douglas C. (Foreword), Factories in the Field, The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California, University of California Press, April 2000, {{ISBN|9780520224131}}, pp. 230-263.</ref>