A white couple who burned a cross in their yard across from their black neighbors' home is under investigation by the FBI
The FBI is investigating a white South Carolina couple for racial discrimination after they burned a cross in their yard facing their black neighbors' home last month.
Federal civil rights investigators searched the white couple's home in Conway on Wednesday, FBI spokesman Kevin Wheeler said. The retired Black couple also recorded video of the cross being burned over Thanksgiving weekend and described days of repeated threats from their neighbors. The following week, Worden Evander Butler, 28, and Alexis Paige Hartnett, 27, were arrested on state harassment charges and later released on bail.
Cross burnings in the US are “symbols of hate” that are “inextricably intertwined with the history of the Ku Klux Klan,” according to a 2003 US Supreme Court ruling by the late Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. The justices ruled that the First Amendment permits a ban on cross burnings only if they are intended to intimidate, because the action “is a particularly virulent form of intimidation.”
The cross was not on fire when local police officers arrived, but was still “overlooking and in full view of the victims' residence,” according to an Horry County Police Department report. Shawn and Monica Williams, the black neighbors, told WMBF-TV that the burning cross was about eight feet from their fence. They said they are reconsidering their decision to move to the neighborhood two years ago in light of this experience.
'So what should we do now? Do you still live next to a racist who threatens to do us bodily harm?” Monica Williams told the Myrtle Beach broadcaster.
The Associated Press did not immediately receive responses Wednesday to messages seeking comment from a publicly available email address for Butler and a Facebook account for Hartnett. AP also called several telephone numbers for Butler and Hartnett and received no response.
According to the police report, one of the white suspects could be heard on police body camera footage repeatedly making racist comments toward the black couple. Butler also shared the black couple's address on Facebook and posted that he was “summoning the devil's army” and was “about to make them pay,” the report said. Hartnett also threatened to hurt the couple, according to an arrest warrant.
South Carolina is one of two states in the country that does not impose additional penalties for hate crimes committed because of the victim's race or other aspects of their identity. Monica Williams told the AP on Wednesday that she hopes the episode highlights the need for hate crime laws. In the meantime, she and her husband will “wait patiently for justice to be served.”
“The laws are necessary to protect everyone from any form of hatred,” she said.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, the Ku Klux Klan began using “cross lights” in the early 20th century as part of the hate group's rituals and as an intimidating act of terror. The image is so synonymous with racist ideologies that tattoos of burning crosses are found behind klansmen among European white supremacists, the ADL notes.
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Pollard is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.