c. 1996 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)-Arsons that have damaged or destroyed dozens of black churches in the South are rekindling fears of militant racism in the United States and leading some church and civic leaders to compare the incidents to the violence of the civil rights era of the 1960s, when churches were burned to intimidate African-Americans.

Since 1990 there have been about 50 cases involving burning or desecration of houses of worship, most of them black, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. On Tuesday (May 21) the House Judiciary Committee will hold oversight hearings on the arsons.

“This is an issue about racism,” said the Rev. Mac Charles Jones, associate for racial justice of the National Council of Churches, an organization of 33 Protestant and Orthodox denominations. “It’s not simply about black churches being burned but it’s about a climate in this country that fosters racism.”

Federal authorities said they have hundreds of agents working on the cases, but some community leaders have questioned the seriousness of the probes and why the fires have not become a more visible national issue.

Jones, who met recently with pastors of burned churches, said most of those clergy”see these acts as racist violence, and nobody seems to want to acknowledge that.” (BEGIN FIRST OPTIONAL TRIM)

This month a delegation from the National Council of Churches is traveling through the South, building community awareness about the fires and critiquing the ongoing investigations.

In April, the Christian Coalition offered a $25,000 reward to anyone who can prove that racism motivated the arsons.

And in early June, an ecumenical service and meetings with federal officials are planned for leaders of affected churches.

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Federal investigators have said they lack evidence to conclude that there is a regional or national racial conspiracy behind the attacks. Still, officials do not rule out race as a factor in at least some of the fires, and they defend their handling of the probes.

Myron Marlin, a Justice Department spokesman, said 17 of the approximately 50 cases have been resolved.”It is one of the largest investigations we’ve got going,”Marlin said of the inquiry, which includes Federal Bureau of Investigation agents.

Despite claims that officials have shied away from connecting the incidents with racial issues, Marlin said,”These fires may have been motivated by a number of factors but certainly several of the cases that have already been solved have already been shown to be motivated by race.” He added,”The civil rights division (of the Justice Department) is involved in these cases because of the possibility that these might be motivated by race.” Some congregations, focusing on rebuilding, worry about the potential for fresh arson attacks on new buildings.”Our main concern is … the rebuilding of our churches and going on with our own spiritual work, but yet there is a concern in the back of our minds,”said the Rev. Daniel Donaldson, pastor of Salem Baptist Church, near Humboldt, Tenn., where evidence of a fire-starting substance was found after the church burned on Dec. 30, 1995.”If we rebuild, when we got back will we still be confronted with these same problems?” In many instances, the history of race-related problems-past and recent-looms large in the memory of those who are dealing with the current devastation. Those memories foster a long-held mistrust of government agencies by blacks.”There’s always the fear within the collective memory of the African-American community … particularly in the South, of collusion of local law enforcement authorities and those who in fact are involved with these white racist groups,”said Ron Daniels, executive director of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which plans to file civil lawsuits against perpetrators of the crimes.

He cited the fact that two agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) were removed from investigations of black Southern church fires because they attended so-called”Good Ol’ Boy Roundups”where racist acts are alleged to have occurred.

Daniels, who is working with the National Council of Churches and the Atlanta-based Center for Democratic Renewal on a campaign to help the burned churches, questioned the interrogations of some church members by agents.”What has happened in many instances is the victims … the congregations and the pastors have been subjected to greater scrutiny, it would appear … than outside forces,”he said.

Darren McKinney, a spokesman for the U.S. Treasury Department, which includes the ATF, declined to speak about the specifics of the arson investigation. But, he said,”Anyone who asserts that we’re not doing all that ought to be done is simply misinformed.” McKinney said the ATF has 25 open investigations of African-American church fires since January 1, 1995. Four white males have been arrested in those cases, two of whom have ties to white supremacist groups and two of whom have some history of pyromania, he said.

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Obie Clark, president of the Meridian, Miss., chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said suspicions about the motivations in the fires remind him of a recent controversy in Mississippi’s jails. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, at least 47 inmates, more than half of whom were black, were found fatally hanged in the jails. Civil rights leaders thought the hangings marked the return of lynchings to their region.

Authorities ruled the deaths were suicides, called for major corrections in the system after an investigation, but found no civil rights violations.”Now we’re at the same basic position with church burnings,”Clark said.”We just can’t help (but) believe that these hate groups are behind most of these burnings.” The NAACP leader is particularly upset about an Easter Sunday morning fire at St. Paul Primitive Baptist Church in Meridian that investigators declared an accident. Clark said authorities determined the fire was caused by a cigarette discarded by a church deacon.”We don’t necessarily agree with their ruling,”he said.”They don’t want it to be characterized as racially motivated.” Millard Mackey, Mississippi’s chief fire marshal, said he wasn’t aware of community concern about the investigation, which he said involved the FBI, the ATF, his office and sheriff’s deputies.”If it turned out to be an arson fire, we would have aggressively pursued those individuals that were found responsible,”Mackey said.”In this particular case, the investigation proved out to be an accidental fire and all agencies that were involved were all satisfied that that was an accident.” Mackey would not comment on the details of the incident.

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In general, there seems to be a growing sense of impatience about the fire investigations. But representatives of organizations that have been tracking the fires differ in their views of the authorities.”I definitely believe that they are sincere in their efforts and that they’re putting out an all-out effort on it,”said Angela Lowry, an analyst with Klanwatch, the investigative arm of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil-rights advocacy group in Montgomery, Ala.

Although others suspect a conspiracy in the arsons, Lowry said her organization’s independent investigations have not drawn that conclusion. She said Klanwatch, which monitors white supremacist activity, would look for groups or individuals traveling from state to state starting the fires in the same way.”We’re not finding that,”she said.”The only white supremacist connection that we have seen,”she said, is the case of Timothy Adron Welch, a 23-year-old who at the time of his arrest was carrying a card identifying him as a member of the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Welch and Gary Christopher Cox, 22, have been charged with burning Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church in Greeleyville, S.C., and Macedonia Baptist Church in Bloomville, S.C., in June 1995.

The Center for Democratic Renewal, which has worked to counter racial violence since 1979, issued a preliminary report in March tying the church fires to racial motivation.”The current attacks on black churches in the South (are) also painfully reminiscent of the 1963 firebombing of a Birmingham (Ala.) church that claimed the lives of four young girls,”the organization said in its report.”The resurgence of this type of terrorism reflects the ongoing agenda of far-right groups.” The Rev. C.T. Vivian, board chairman of the Center for Democratic Renewal, sees similarities between the cases: they are mostly rural, mostly Southern, there have been arrests of white male suspects and, in some cases, the perpetrators had to pass white churches to burn black ones.

But Vivian is not about to condemn the Clinton administration’s progress in probing the arson mystery.”This administration has done more to stop it than any other administration,”he said.”They’ve at least caught 17 people and put them in jail.” The Rev. Terrance Mackey, pastor of Mt. Zion AME Church in Greeleyville, S.C. offers words of hope for better relations among people rather than condemnation of those who allegedly burned down his church.

He says he feels sorry for the accused and hopes people can learn to respect each other.”It hurts me that our society has allowed this,”Mackey said.”We have to learn to let people know that everybody has a right. Respect people, people respect you back. You don’t have to like them. No law says you have to like me. You have to respect me.”

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