Flaming Crosses 

 

After the civil War, Scébanja comes back to the land where he was born a slave to buy a farm and to behave like the free man he thinks he has at last become.
But this does not take account of hatred from the whites. Rendered poor by the war that dispossessed them of free labour, they regard their former slaves' emancipation with disapproval.
The Ku Klux Klan enters the fray...

Using a precise historical event, the birth of the Ku Klux Klan in the United States, Les Croix en feu singles out racism, still as flagrant a reality as ever. Pierre Pelot has written a realist narrative without giving in to complacency or sordid realism. Yet it is lucid since the two main characters, knowing full well that their victory is but fleeting, prefer to escape to the North, where crosses do not burn in the night.