Klan's cross returns to Cincinnati square

The Associated Press

12.02.98

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CINCINNATI — A Ku Klux Klan-sponsored cross was back on Fountain Square downtown for the holiday season yesterday, but passers-by largely ignored the 10-foot-tall wooden symbol.

Some protesters jeered as four members of the American Knights of the KKK erected the cross, while city police officers stood watch nearby.

Anthony Cooper, 19, a black Cincinnati man, was among those who heckled the Klan members.

"Can you look me in the eyes and tell me you hate me?" Cooper called out.

"We're not a racist organization," said one of the Klan members, who refused to give his name. "We're for the rights of white people."

The square, located in the heart of Cincinnati's business district, already has a city-sponsored holiday skating rink and a Santa's toy workshop display sponsored by a bank.

The Klan group erected the cross under terms of a 10-day display permit obtained from City Hall.

The city previously had fought to keep Klan crosses out of the square, but lost each time in federal court.

Judges ruled that the Klan has the same free-speech right as other organizations to sponsor displays on the public property.

City Councilman Tyrone Yates said he would ask city officials and religious leaders to organize a protest against the cross Sunday.

"People can't keep their noses out of other people's business," said the Rev. Jeff Berry of Butler, Ind., who identified himself as imperial wizard of the Klan group.

Berry said his group had nothing to do with the Knight Riders of the KKK, the group that had sponsored the prior crosses on Fountain Square since 1992.

The Klan claims its cross is intended as a symbol of Christianity, but critics say it is a symbol of the Klan itself and its racist ideology.

The Klan has erected crosses on Fountain Square almost every year since former U.S. District Judge Carl Rubin allowed a Jewish group to put up a menorah.

Last year's holiday season was the first in seven years in which the Klan didn't erect a cross on Fountain Square. The leader of the Klan group that had been displaying the cross was being prosecuted on unrelated criminal charges in northern Kentucky and never filed a permit application with Cincinnati.

The American Knights group is among various organizations that have obtained city permits this year for holiday displays on the square.

Cincinnati repeatedly has fought display of the Klan cross. The most recent attempt occurred in 1995, when the city tried to ban the cross under an ordinance that denied permits for displays that communicated "fighting words."

A federal judge struck down that ordinance, saying the cross was an exercise of free speech protected by the First Amendment.