Fighting the fires: Pastors appeal for solidarity to stop Klan arson

by Tim Wheeler

This article was reprinted from the June 22, 1996 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

Rev. Larry Hill, pastor of Matthew-Murkland Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, N.C., appealed for an outpouring of solidarity against the plague of racist arson attacks that destroyed his church and scores of others since 1990.

"If this goes on, it will not be long before life is threatened or destroyed," Rev. Hill told the World in a telephone interview last Tuesday. "That is the reason for the urgency. I think the number one thing that people can do is to show their outrage, to show that hate crimes like this will not go unchallenged."

Hill spoke from his new church, which was not damaged in the fire. Destroyed was the old wooden church nearby that had not been in use for some years. The mostly-Black congregation had been planning to restore the handsome gothic-style wooden structure.

"This is a tactic of intimidation to spread fear and division among us," Hill said, but "we've had overwhelming support from the Charlotte community, across the country and the world." Police have taken into custody a 13-year-old white girl on charges of starting the fire.

Hill traveled to New York June 18 to receive a check to help rebuild the church from Rabbi Marc Schneider, president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding. Rabbi Schneider compared the church burnings to Nazi Germany's Kristallnacht attack on synagogues in 1938. "Bigots do not discriminate," he said. "Today it is a Black church, tomorrow it is a synagogue."

Rev. Hill warned that the plague is spreading, with two churches burned in North Carolina June 17, as well as a multiracial church in Stone Mountain, Georgia. A church shared by two congregations in Queens, N.Y. was vandalized with racist graffiti and the letters KKK burned into the lawn. Two Black churches within four miles of each other near Kossuth, Miss. were torched late Monday night.

"We need more [law enforcement] manpower to insure that the arsonists are apprehended," said Hill. "It will help deter these hate crimes."

President Clinton has spoken out against the church bombings and has ordered a dramatic increase in the number of federal agents assigned to the arson. But the GOP attacked the president, accusing him of "political grandstanding." The GOP's presumptive presidential candidate, Bob Dole, campaigning in Alabama, made no mention of the racist arson attacks.

Jim Pierce, a retiree member of the Charlotte Central Labor Council, told the World, "We helped the students and Dr. Martin Luther King fight against this type of incident in the days of the civil rights movement and we have to do it again. We haven't been asked to help in rebuilding. But we'll be there for them. Labor has a long tradition of donating time for the public good."

Ron Daniels, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said his group is part of a coalition that includes the 52 million member National Council of Churches that has been mobilizing against the church-burnings for months now. These arson attacks, he said, have exposed "a dangerous resurgence of overt racism. It has to be connected to the overtly racist anti-Black pronouncements, the anti-affirmative action, anti-immigrant, policies of the right-wing politicians that began with Ronald Reagan's election."

Daniels denounced as a diversionary ploy a "pastors summit" against the burnings convened by Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition. "The Christian Coalition is a wolf in sheep's clothing," Daniels said. "It's not just the church burnings but the things that led to the church burnings, the scapegoating of Blacks, Latinos, immigrants, gays, that covers up corporate domination and rule by the super-rich."

Daniels charged that church burnings go hand in hand with right-wing extremist attacks on Medicare, Medicaid and welfare benefits for poor mothers and children.

On Monday, a new coalition of Atlanta-based civil rights groups and religious leaders convened a news conference and also denounced the Christian Coalition. "It is not just those who strike the match," said the Rev. C.T. Vivian of the Center for Democratic Renewal. "The far right is really the problem we face here. There's only a slippery slope between conservative religious persons and those that are actually doing the burning."

The Rev. Gerald Durley of Concerned Black Clergy added, "We are not certain whether these burnings constitute a national conspiracy by emerging hate groups, but there is a conspiracy of ignorance and fear which is prompting individuals in groups to destroy institutions at the heart of America.

Elaine Jones, director counsel NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, spoke of the church burnings in her statement denouncing the Supreme Court's decision throwing out four predominantly Black and Latino congressional districts in North Carolina and Texas. The decision "torches African American ability to attain representation," she said.

"This country is facing a racial crisis with church burnings, with a massive increase in hate crimes and with problems that face all racial groups, such as poverty and inadequate access to quality education," Jones said. "We must come together as a nation to solve these problems."

But the Supreme Court's ruling, she charged, is a step aimed at "excluding persons of color from the halls of Congress, state legislatures, city councils and school boards. This is a dangerous trend .... resegregating our government."

-Keith Mitchell contributed to this article