SOMBER FIRES

String of Nighttime Fires Hit Predominately Black Churches in Four Southern States 

The first arson fire occurred in the early morning hours of Monday, June 22, at the College Hills Seventh Day Adventist Church, home to a predominately black congregation, in Knoxville, Tenn. Knoxville Fire Department spokesperson D.J. Corcoran said the arsonist set fires at multiple locations on the church property, including igniting bales of hay left at the church’s door. The church’s van also was burned.

The following day, Tuesday June 23, an arsonist was blamed for a fire in the sanctuary s at God’s Power Church of Christ in Macon, Ga.

The third suspected arson fire occurred in the predawn hours of Wednesday, June 24, at the Briar Creek Baptist Church in Charlotte, N.C.

That fire, reported at 1 a.m. EDT, caused an estimated $250,000 in damage, destroying an education wing in one of four buildings that make up the Briar Creek Road Baptist Church complex in east Charlotte, authorities said. The church’s sanctuary and gymnasium sustained heavy smoke damage.

“Our investigators did not find any direct evidence that would lead them to believe at this time that this is a hate crime,” Charlotte Fire Department spokeswoman Cynthia Robbins Shah-Khan told Hatewatch today. 

“Of course, that is a possibility.”

The church has about 100 members, most of them African Americans, but it also shares space with two churches for immigrants from Nepal, according to media reports.

Also on Wednesday, fire destroyed the Fruitland Presbyterian Church, in Gibson County, Tenn., a landmark structure built in the 1800s.

While the cause of that fire remains under investigation, preliminary reports suggest it may have been caused by a lightning strike, television station WBBJ reported.

The fires also occurred at a time when there is increasing public pressure to remove the Confederate flag – one of the last hallmarks of white superiority — from government buildings and public places as well as banning assorted Confederate flag merchandise sold in retails stores and online. 

“As the nation grapples with the massacre at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., one of the oldest Black churches in the South, other Black churches have become recent targets of arson,” writer David A. Love said today at Atlanta BlackStar.

“From slavery and the days of Jim Crow through the civil rights movement and beyond, white supremacists have targeted the Black church because of its importance as a pillar of the Black community, the center for leadership and institution building, education, social and political development and organizing to fight oppression,” Love wrote.

“Strike at the Black church, and you strike at the heart of Black American life,” the writer added.

Sad how deeply these arsons burn into the fabric of the lies we tell ourselves. It would be a powerful political move to remove the symbol of the Confederate flag. But, to what end? What would change? Who would change? 

A friend of mind, Ade, responded saying, "Yes, Dawn Wolf, the answers are staring at us in the mirror, or maybe that is all too simple for the human mind."

Perhaps. Or we are made of more fear than courage and illusions are a better source of fuel to feed the fears that define us as a nation?

- Gregory E. Woods 6.28.15