What is the origin of the Ku Klux Klan's use of cross burning in the United States?
Executive summary
The Ku Klux Klan’s use of cross burning in the United States has roots in a much older Scottish signaling custom but was invented as a Klan practice in the early 20th century after being popularized in fiction and film; the first recorded Klan cross burning occurred at Stone Mountain, Georgia, in 1915 under William J. Simmons [1] [2] [3]. Historians emphasize that the Reconstruction-era original Klan did not practice cross burning and that the ritual was largely a product of literary invention and a subsequent performative revival used for intimidation, recruitment, and publicity [4] [2] [5].
1. The older “fiery cross” that wasn’t the Klan’s — a Scottish precedent
Long before American racists adopted it, the practice of lighting a cross on a hill existed in Scotland as a form of clan signaling or rallying for battle, a medieval custom historians link to the imagery Klan boosters later invoked [1] [6] [7].
2. A fiction that became a ritual — Thomas Dixon and the invention of the Klan cross
The direct cultural origin of the Klan’s burning cross in the United States traces to Thomas Dixon Jr.’s 1905 novel The Clansman, which dramatized a “fiery cross” ritual and explicitly tied the imagined Klan to Scottish clan lore; Dixon’s text provided the template that later performers adopted and that film amplified [3] [4] [2].
3. Film, revival, and the first recorded burning — 1915 at Stone Mountain
When D. W. Griffith adapted Dixon’s book into The Birth of a Nation in 1915, the cinematic depiction helped cement the image; within months William J. Simmons and his revivalist Ku Klux Klan staged the first recorded cross burning atop Stone Mountain on Thanksgiving Eve 1915, inaugurating the ritual as a public symbol of the revived Klan [2] [3] [8].
4. From symbolism to terror, recruitment, and publicity — how the ritual was used
Once adopted, burning crosses served multiple functions: as a terror tactic aimed at Black Americans and other targeted groups, as a theatrical recruitment and identity ritual that signaled “Invisible Empire” cohesion, and sometimes simply as publicity to draw press attention to Klan rallies — for example, the Klan’s coordinated cross burnings around the 1920s that generated newspaper coverage and large gatherings [9] [10] [5] [11].
5. Legal and interpretive fallout — speech, intimidation, and public meaning
The symbol’s transformation into an emblem of racial intimidation reached courts and scholars: Supreme Court materials and First Amendment scholarship trace how cross burning moved from folkloric reference to a legally fraught act evaluated as potential intimidation rather than protected expression, while civil-rights histories document coordinated mid-20th century burnings tied to violent Klan campaigns [4] [1] [12].
6. Competing narratives and hidden agendas
Primary sources show two competing currents: Klan self-presentation framed the ritual as “cross-lighting” or a Christian affirmation, whereas critics and victims experienced it as terror and symbolic white supremacy; literary and cinematic promoters like Dixon and Griffith had explicit agendas of romanticizing the Klan and legitimizing white vigilante violence, and the revived Klan exploited those cultural products to claim historical lineage and moral sanction [2] [4] [3].
7. What the sources cannot resolve here
Available materials establish the literary-to-ceremonial pipeline and document first recorded uses and later campaigns, but they cannot definitively apportion motive in every individual incident or fully catalogue non-Klan cross burnings later copied by other actors; where sources differ, the dominant historiographical view remains that cross burning as a Klan practice is a modern invention rooted in early 20th-century revivalism rather than Reconstruction-era Klan activity [4] [9].