BY DANA DiFILIPPO
The Cincinnati Enquirer
![[klan]](/editions/1998/12/06/klan_180x125.jpg)
Raymond Jones of Westwood and Klansman James E. Hogg talk on Fountain Square Saturday.
(Yoni Pozner photo)
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Two days after vandals toppled a wooden cross that Ku Klux Klan members erected on Fountain Square downtown, about 35 hooded Klan members brought a huge steel cross to replace it, guarding it for five hours Saturday and trading taunts with a crowd that challenged them.
About 30 Cincinnati police officers patrolled the square, with metal barricades and about a dozen officers separating the KKK ralliers and spectators. Police reported no injuries and one disorderly-conduct arrest. Cincinnati Human Relations Commission members mingled with the crowd to defuse arguments.
The gathering dispersed just 15 minutes before the city's annual Christmas parade along Fifth Street.
Klan members from as far away as Georgia and Michigan said they came to stand up for free-speech rights.
"We have a right to put this cross up," said the Rev. Jeffrey Berry of Butler, Ind., the KKK's national imperial wizard. "For anyone to tear it down is . . . unconstitutional."
The Rev. James E. Hogg, state exalted cyclops in Ohio, agreed: "This is my religious beliefs. (Removing the cross) should be a hate crime."
Until last year, Klan members erected a cross on
Fountain Square every year since 1990, after courts allowed a Jewish group to display a menorah. Last year, the Klan's cross was absent when Klansman Tony Gamble, who organized the display, was convicted and imprisoned for raping two girls.
At Saturday's rally, Klan members decried child molestation, an irony that wasn't lost on the crowd.
Critics vowed to topple the cross again, waving signs bearing such slogans as "Steel Crosses Fall Harder than Wooden Ones" and "Stop Inbreeding. It Causes Racism." Klan members responded with racial epithets and chanted "White Pride Worldwide."
"This is sickening," said Marcus Kimble, a construction worker from Bond Hill who stopped by the square on his lunch break. "Why do they (city leaders) let them do this at Christmastime, letting all the kids see this? Kids shouldn't see this garbage."
Lincoln Ware, a Silverton resident and WCIN radio talk show host, agreed: "I'm embarrassed for the city of Cincinnati. We should have 10,000 people here to frighten them away from here. They (KKK members) are not intimidated at all. They feel like they're at home."
Other passersby used the incident to teach their children about tolerance.
"It's their First Amendment right, but it's a shame this is the way they use it," said Julia Kissel of Mount Healthy, an Aiken High School teacher who brought her son Samuel, 2. "This is so divisive. I wish these people weren't so ignorant. But even though I don't agree with this, I think it should be protected."
Civil-rights supporters plan to rally against the KKK display at 5:30 p.m. today on Fountain Square.
![[klan]](/editions/1998/12/06/klan_600x415.jpg)