Racist attacks fear after church fires

Investigators from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division remove the remains of a door from the Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church. Picture: Veasey Conway/The Morning News via AP

Investigators from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division remove the remains of a door from the Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church. Picture: Veasey Conway/The Morning News via AP

Published Jul 2, 2015

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Black congregations in the American South were on edge on Wednesday night as investigators sought answers after a fire destroyed a historic church in Greeleyville, South Carolina, bringing to seven the number of churches that have burnt since the Bible class shooting in Charleston on last month that left nine dead.

The series of fires at churches in four states, North and South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee, with mostly black congregations have raised fears among some that they were started by arsonists sympathetic to Dylann Roof, the suspect in the Charleston massacre who allegedly said he intended to start a “race war”, and those enraged by the campaign to discredit the Confederate flag in light of the attack in Charleston.

All that remained on Wednesday of the Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church in Greeleyville were its brick walls.

The original structure was burnt to the ground only 20 years ago, in an inferno that led to the arrest and conviction of two white supremacist members of the KKK.

While the loss of the church for a second time was fuelling anxiety in the community, many of whom have taken to social media under the hashtag #WhoIsBurningBlackChurches, there were initial signs that the fire might have been sparked by a lightning bolt.

The fire broke out at around 8.30pm local time when storms were moving through the area.

But no final determination had been reached.

“We haven't ruled anything out at this point,” Craig Chillcott of the Charlotte field division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told reporters at the scene.

Each incident has been subjected to investigations by the Bureau as well as local fire departments. So far arson has been deemed the likely cause in two and possibly three cases.

Officials said they had found evidence of criminal intent at least in the burning of the Briar Creek Road Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the College Hill Seventh-day Adventist in Knoxville, Tennessee.

In neither case, however, has there been any suggestion that hate crimes were involved in setting the churches ablaze.

Nor has there been any evidence to indicate a co-ordinated campaign to target black churches.

Such reassurances will do little to assuage suspicions among some citizens that at least some of the fires are linked to the Charleston shootings and in particular the campaign that sprang from it to discredit the Confederate flag and have it excised from public view.

The movement has deeply angered those who feel the flag is a historic marker of Southern culture that should be celebrated not reviled.

Meanwhile, the shock of losing the AME Church in Greeleyville, which is about 50 miles north of Charleston, was setting in.

“It's sad and a bit disheartening, and my heart goes out to this particular congregation, having to endure the loss of their sanctuary by fire again,” said the Rev Allen W Parrott, an elder of the AME churches in the area. “Everybody's a little emotional, but good folks. Good Christian folk who are going to pull together and move forward.

“The African Methodist Episcopal Church has always been a church of resilience. We've been going through some emotional things the last few weeks, but we still know that God is able, and we will rally,” he told reporters.

“Greeleyville is a small community with a big heart,” Mayor Jesse Parker said.

“When we went out to the scene last night we were saddened by what we saw there.”

It isn't surprising that people would connect the church burnings to the Confederate flag controversy and the Charleston tragedy, Mark Potok, a fellow of the Southern Poverty Law Centre, which monitors hate groups, told CNN.

“There were scores and scores and scores of arson and other attacks on black churches during the civil rights era,” he noted. But that doesn't mean it's the case this time.

“There's no apparent connection, nothing to say they are connected,” he added.

“It's speculation at this point.”

The Independent

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