c. 1996 Religion News Service
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (RNS)-Federal officials say they have found no evidence of any widespread conspiracy behind the many suspicious fires that have destroyed black churches across the South recently, although one investigator says some of the fires are “likely connected.”
A 19-year-old white volunteer firefighter was arrested Wednesday (March 6) in connection with the latest fire, last week’s razing of the New Liberty Baptist Church in rural Tyler, Ala. But authorities say they see no link to the other fires being investigated in Alabama and elsewhere.
The pace of the church burnings appears to have quickened significantly in the past two months. According to the Alabama-based Klanwatch organization, an arm of the Southern Poverty Law Center, there have been at least 28 suspicious fires at predominantly black churches in Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, Louisiana, Texas and Alabama since 1989. Klanwatch says 13 of the churches were burned in the last two months.
Klanwatch Director Joe Roy said the organization is “particularly concerned about this tremendous increase since December of 1995.”
The arrested firefighter, Christopher Allen Deer of Tyler, faces a state arson charge and has admitted responsibility for last week’s blaze, said Jim Cavanaugh, special agent in charge of the Birmingham office of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The ATF also is investigating fires that have destroyed three other black churches in Alabama since December.
Deer’s motive is still unclear, Cavanaugh said. “He came to our attention because he is a firefighter and because of some grass fires,” he said. He would not elaborate.
The ATF is looking at 17 suspicious fires in six states “to see if there is a relationship,” Cavanaugh said. “What we have is … some are likely connected. Some could be white hatred, vandalism or arson to cover a burglary.”
The Rev. Joseph Lowery, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said the recent fires in rural Alabama recall the days of the civil rights struggle when many black churches in the state were bombed or torched.
Lowery said he thinks the fires are racially motivated. He blamed the fires on the current political climate, which he called a “new birth of the new version of George Wallace,” Alabama’s former segregationist governor.
“What else could it be?” Lowery said. “Have they burned anything other than black churches? It looks racial to me. It’s got to be.”
Lowery said burning black churches is a form of intimidation and a way to get at a “mass of black people. It’s the symbol of the base of the black movement. If you burn a black church, it represents a family. The churches are available and isolated. They can do it with the least likelihood of getting caught.”
MJP END WALTON
