Date: Tue, 19 Jul 94 00:49:45 EST
From: Doug Gardner <DGGARDNE%MIAMIU.bitnet@KSUVM.KSU.EDU>
Robert Harris, while noting that the name of the KKK might have something to
do with the Greek root _kuklos_, circle, off-handedly called attention to=
the
tendency of those he justly calls Ku Kreeps to stand around burning crosses=
in
circles. I was taught (I _think_ by John Hope Franklin, but after all these
years who can be sure?) that cross-burning is an invention of DW Griffiths,
which was subsequently taken up by William Simmons as, in effect, a=
publicity
stunt in founding and publicizing the Second Klan, with the practice being
subsequently rolled into Klan ritual. In effect, Griffiths thought that a
cross burning would look neat on film, and things progressed from there. At
least I hope this is account is more or less so: I just told it to a=
classful
last Thursday night. I even criticized the TV show _Dr. Quinn, Medicine=
Woman_
for portraying a nineteenth-century cross burning which I caught one night
while flipping channels.
It's always puzzled me as to why Klan members would find a burning cross a=
good
symbol of anything, beyond a rip-roaring good show. It seems to me to be a
combination of sacrilege and invocation of a "Papist," mostly non-Protestant
symbol.
So far as the wearing of gowns by other secret orders in the postbellum=
South
goes: one obvious place to look would be in the rituals of college=
Greek-letter
fraternities, many of which were founded in the South in the late=
1860s=9Bearly
1870s. In one such organization of which I have some knowledge the chapter
officers wear long black robes with various insignia on them. I imagine the
same sort of evidence could be testified to by others. In the early 1970s,
while my father was the frat's alumni president for the area for a period
during which the local chapter was inactive, he and I (I was ten or so) took
a set of such robes to the local dry cleaners in suburban Columbus, Ohio.=
Boy,
did we get some looks.
Doug Gardner
Miami University of Ohio
dggardne@miamiu.bitnet