Freedom Socialist • Vol. 17, No. 3 • October-December 1996

The fires of racism:
Black churches burn while
government investigates congregations

by Linda Averill

THE NIGHT RIDERS are back. More than three decades after the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham church killed four girls getting ready for choir practice, violence against Black churches is again sweeping the South -- and making inroads up North.

In 18 months, at least 62 African American churches have burned in 12 southern states. In the Northwest, nine churches have been torched, others defaced by racist graffiti, an NAACP office firebombed, and a Black bookstore painted with swastikas.

How could this wave of terror be swelling again?

The supporting cast. White supremacists these days are encouraged and emboldened by public officials, Republicans and Democrats alike. Immigrant-bashing, attacks on affirmative action and voting rights, the resurrection of confederate symbols, and the like are rebuilding a climate of "legitimacy" for racist scapegoating.

And local police and federal government agencies are covering for the arsonist thugs. Law enforcers still deny the attacks are linked, even though most of those caught so far have ties to the Klan or Nazi-type groups. But arrests are few; even now, cops are quick to dismiss the burnings as electrical fires or non-racial acts of arson.

When they do investigate, their targets are often the congregations who have lost their churches -- as police did in Knoxville, Tennessee, where they fingerprinted parishioners and insinuated that they torched their own house of worship.

Police also show their complicity with the bombers and burners by withholding information. They regularly refuse to discuss their investigations with congregations who have been victimized, and they keep silent about planned Nazi and Klan activities to prevent community groups from protesting.

Adding insult to injury are insurance companies. A report by the Associated Press documented that insurers were slow to settle claims brought by African American churches. Moreover, out of 10 Black churches and five white churches that burned, five had policies cancelled -- all of them Black.

Everybody's urgent business. Fortunately, a movement to defend Black churches is rising. Groups are collecting funds, speaking out, and organizing. This activism holds the potential to grow into a multi-racial united front of all the many targets of the ultra-right.

Here are a few immediate tasks to be tackled:

Demand that officials bar insurance companies from cancelling the policies of churches hit by arson.

Form ongoing defense guards to protect churches and other institutions singled out for harm.

Pressure police to make information about rightwing gatherings public; organize to confront the racists wherever they gather.

The crimes against Black churches show starkly that the work of the Civil Rights Movement was never completed. Where that movement stopped at reform, the one built today must go on to revolution: fundamental reshaping of the entire economic and social system that supports and depends on racism. Too much violence and too many deaths testify that this is the only way that racism in the U.S. will be eradicated.

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