In this image, a burlap-wrapped wooden cross, soaked in gasoline, awaits lighting during a Ku Klux Klan (KKK) rally. As a ritual, the group’s modern use of cross burning developed in part out of the heroization and exaggerated retelling of the KKK as saviors in the postbellum South as represented in D. W. Griffith’s 1915 film Birth of a Nation. The practice remains one of the KKK’s tactics of intimidation for those they target, including African Americans, Catholics, Jews, and immigrants.
This vernacular snapshot treats the charged subject without dramatic perspective or artfulness. Like the identity of the photographer and the location of the scene, the picturetaker’s relationship to the event and the purpose of the image are unknown.
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