(Headline USA) A large, burning cross was discovered at a Chicago park on Tuesday afternoon, and police said they are investigating how it ended up there and the motive behind it.
Video taken by a motorist shows the wooden cross engulfed in bright orange flames as it leans against a tree in Grant Park, a popular area near Lake Michigan. The Chicago Fire Department confirmed the flaming object was a cross, and said officials put out the fire.
Chicago Police said there were no reports of injuries and that they are investigating the motive and circumstances around the “object on fire.”
Keinika Carlton, 43, was driving home from running errands with her daughter and mother-in-law when they saw the cross on fire. She said she felt a combination of shock, sadness, disgust, as well as curiosity.
“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 tall. The experience was new to all of them, including Carlton’s mother-in-law, who grew up in Kentucky.
This burning cross was found in Grant Park in Chicago & a white man was seen walking away from it with a dark colored backpack & wearing shorts & a T shirt. A burning cross is a racial hate symbol and mostly associated with the KKK. Is this what this Country has become now! pic.twitter.com/SK7Onm5GIn
— Suzie rizzio (@Suzierizzo1) June 10, 2026
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 U.S. have historically been seen as “symbols of hate” that are “inextricably intertwined with the history of the Ku Klux Klan,” according to a 2003 U.S. 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.”
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
