Returning home from work last Friday, a Muncie woman found a smouldering cross in her back yard.

MUNCIE, Ind. (AP) — Muncie police are investigating the burning of a cross in a black family’s back yard.

“I cried because I know I’ve never done anything to deserve this,” Mary Pointer said Tuesday. “It just really hurt.”

Pointer, who lives with her daughter and four grandchildren near Muncie Central High School, said the incident has left her concerned for her family’s safety.

Pointer reported the incident to Muncie police Friday after family members found the 4-foot-tall wooden cross smoking in the back yard while she was at work. Sgt. Mike Engle said someone would likely have to come forward with more information before the investigation could progress.

That was how a similar 2006 incident was solved, he said. In that case, two Muncie men burned an 8-foot cross in the yard of a home where a white woman lived with her three biracial children. Kyle Milbourn, 22, was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison while Kyle Shroyer, 22, received a 15-month term after they were convicted of civil rights violations.

Engle said the latest case would be forwarded to the FBI if police received more information.

Donna Patterson, who lives nearby and is white, said she couldn’t remember any similar events happening in the neighborhood.

Pointer said she has encountered racism before, but the eastern Indiana city shouldn’t be judged by a “few bad apples.”
“Not everybody is racist,” she said.

Like the rush of power and jism that is rape, cross burnings are designed to exert dominance and control over other human beings or "punish" Blacks and those who love them for stepping out of their prescribed "place." Cross burnings have increasingly been used to terrorize couples and single women--Black or white--who are attempting to raise successful Black children in cities around Indianpolis and as far away as Elkhart and Gary.

What's interesting about this cross-burnering is this--aside from the fact that these miscreants are rich enough to have been able to afford the gas it takes to soak and burn all that lumber--is that we will continue to treat this incident separately and not as a more important indicator when the recent attacks are considered together.

Be sure to read Melissa's post here.

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