A shocking discovery was made in a Chicago park on Tuesday afternoon when a large, burning cross was found, prompting an investigation by the police to determine how it got there and what the motive might be.
A video captured by a passing driver shows a wooden cross ablaze in vivid orange flames, leaning against a tree in Grant Park, a well-known spot near Lake Michigan.
According to the Chicago Fire Department, the fiery object was indeed a cross. Firefighters quickly extinguished the flames.
Chicago police reported that no injuries were associated with the incident and that they are currently probing the reasons and circumstances surrounding the “object on fire.”
Keinika Carlton, 43, was on her way home from running errands with her daughter and mother-in-law when she noticed the burning cross.
She expressed feeling a mix of emotions, including shock, sadness, disgust, and curiosity upon witnessing the scene.
“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.”
Carlton estimated 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 said 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 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.”
Alyna Carlton, 22, said she never thought she would see something like that in her lifetime.
“It kind of really opened my eyes, had me realize that I’m not that far removed from the past.”
