Burning Cross Race Attack

A stark reminder from Handsworth of the intolerance and hatred that darkened the streets of 1960s Britain.

Thankfully the feared rise of a Ku Klux Klan-style organisation operating in the Midlands in 1965 failed to materialise. The press were hunting for connections between fire bomb attacks in Leamington Spa and Handsworth and Balsall Heath in Birmingham. With their use of a burning cross the perpetrators were hijacking emotive imagery from the American south and the despised Ku Klux Klan. Mrs Ruby Henry provides a first hand account of what happened to Reg Harcourt.