Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Don’t legalize assaults

Friday, May 31, 2002 | 11:55 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

SO A CROSS IS BURNING ON YOUR FRONT LAWN, BIG DEAL. Just some guys expressing their rights given by the First Amendment. That's all it is unless you are black, Catholic, Jew or some other minority who gets the message you aren't wanted in the neighborhood. If you are a member of my generation, the message is loud and clear that this is not only a warning but that maybe tomorrow night it will not be a burning cross but your burning house. The Ku Klux Klan's symbol is the burning cross and still strikes fear in the hearts of many Americans.

Don't tell the people of Birmingham, Ala., that lynching, bombing of churches and warning burning crosses only happened in the 19th and early 20th centuries and are no longer a threat. Just two weeks ago Bobby Frank Cherry was convicted for the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church that killed four little black girls in 1963. He was convicted by a mostly white jury which sends a positive message that good changes are taking place in our society. Nevertheless, burning crosses are still used to threaten violence and intimidate innocent people.

About the murder of the four girls, a Washington Post editorial noted: "It was a heinous act of terrorism, the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham on Sept. 15, 1963, by Ku Klux Klansmen bent on destroying the headquarters of the nonviolent civil rights movement in Birmingham. It was not the city's only bombing. Far from it: By one account, Birmingham had experienced 47 bombings in the previous 26 years. ..."

The Anti Defamation League has posted on the Internet "The Ku Klux Klan: Burning Crosses in Cyberspace" to remind us that cross burning isn't the only activity of the KKK:

"Still, in the 1990's Klan members remain active and violent, planning terrorist bombings and burning Black churches. In April 1997, three Klan members were arrested in a plot to blow up a natural gas refinery near Fort Worth, Texas. Three more men with links to the Klan were arrested in February 1998 for planning to poison water supplies, rob banks, plant bombs, and commit assassinations. In a July 1998 court judgment, the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, its South Carolina state leader Horace King, and several other Klansmen were held responsible for their roles in a conspiracy to burn down a Black church."

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to consider the free speech argument in the conviction of three men for burning crosses. Virginia law bans cross burning by anyone whose intent is to intimidate anyone for any reason. The Virginia Supreme Court overturned their convictions on the basis that cross burning is symbolic speech protected by the First Amendment.

New York Times writer Linda Greenhouse writes, "The state court decision grew out of two prosecutions in 1998, one of two white men who burned a cross in the yard of a black neighbor in Virginia Beach, and one of a Ku Klux Klan leader in rural Carroll County, who presided over a rally and the burning of a 30-foot cross that was visible for three-quarters of a mile along a state highway."

Terrorists come with hoods for their pointed heads and burning crosses to our homes and communities while we look across the seas for them. Yes, burning a cross is the symbol used to terrify entire families. Since last September we have come to better understand terror. Just mention the word "bomb" in any context around an airport and get ready to wear handcuffs for bracelets.

I don't care if the ACLU does have a black lawyer challenging the Virginia law in the name of freedom of speech. There's no good reason for any American to live in fear because of threats to them and their families. For large numbers of Americans, young and old, the burning cross is an open assault upon their physical and mental well-being. Under these conditions there can be no protection from the Constitution for the perpetrators of these threats.