Over the past week, after the Confederate terrorist attack on the Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, a series of predominantly African-American Christian churches have burned down. The volunteer human rights group Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.) calls for U.S. Department of Justice Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director James Comey to immediately form an interstate task-force to investigate these church fires in connection with the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (18 U.S.C. § 245(b)(2)), and to use their authority to arrest the terrorists behind any arson attacks on houses of worship.
While the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) is leading this investigation from a technical perspective (identifying possible fire accelerant), we also need a coordinated, multi-region, federal law enforcement task force with a focus on Civil Rights Act crimes to play a central role in any investigation. While some of these church fires are being blamed on lightning and electrical failures, others are being viewed as deliberate arson. We believe that those familiar with Confederate terrorist tactics would recognize this as the signature of their past terrorist crimes against African-Americans.
Recent church burnings in the United States of America have included:
1. June 22, 2015 – Knoxville, Tennessee – College Hill Seventh-Day Adventist Church burned down – Cause: Arson – bags of dirt and bales of hay were left on fire outside the African-American church’s doors – and the hay was set on fire. The church van was also damaged by the fire. Status: Arson under investigation.
2. June 23, 2015 – Macon, Georgia – God’s Power Church of Christ burned down – Cause: Arson – the church was gutted by fire and destroyed. Status: Arson under investigation. While the authorities believe it was arson, WMAZ reports that “Macon-Bibb’s fire chief says he still believes that a church fire last week was not a hate crime.”
3. June 24, 2015 – Charlotte, North Carolina –Briar Creek Road Baptist Church burned down – Cause: Evidence of Arson damaging a building which housed church classrooms. Status: Arson under investigation. While the authorities believe it was arson, they state there is “no evidence of a hate crime, said Charlotte Fire Department spokeswoman Cynthia Robbins Shah-Khan.”
4. June 24, 2015 – Memphis, Tennessee – predominantly white American Fruitland Presbyterian Church burned down – Cause: Tennessee local law enforcement and media reporting fire may be due to lighting, with BATF calling it an “isolated incident.”
5. June 26, 2015 – Warrensville, South Carolina – Glover Grove Baptist Church burned down — Cause: Undetermined. WRDW reports that investigators have have “have not been able to determine a cause to that fire, or an exact origin.”
6. June 26, 2015 – Tallahassee, Florida – Greater Miracle Temple Apostolic Holiness Church burned down – Cause: Investigators say “lightning strike,” or fire due to “tree limb”
7. June 27, 2015 – Elyria, Ohio – College Heights Baptist Church burned down – Cause: Unknown, but Chronicle-Telegram states local fire officials ruled out arson
8. June 30, 2015 – Greeleyville, South Carolina – Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church burned down – Cause: Investigators believe “lightning strike.” WCIV and WLTX report that investigators state the fire was not caused by arson. The Mount Zion AME Church which was previously burned down by members of the Confederate Ku Klux Klan terrorist group Christopher Cox and Timothy Welch in June 1995, 20 years ago, who doused the church’s pews and pulpit with accelerants before setting the century-old house of worship ablaze.
The history of white supremacist terrorism against churches and other houses of worship should deeply trouble all Americans and those concerned about such church fires. In any other nation in the world, if their were numerous cases of ARSON against a predominantly minority racial religious group in a week, after a terrorist attack on that house of worship, we would view this as an attack on our universal human rights — especially when a terrorist attacks and murders 9 people in such a house of worship the week before.
But these three recent cases of arson may be only the tip of the iceberg in terms of human rights atrocities by white supremacists and Confederates against American houses of worship. How many malicious and uncontrolled fires are we seeing at American religious institutions? The Washington Post reports statistics from the National Fire Protection Association that, “on average, between 2007 and 2011, roughly 180 intentional “not contained” fires per year — over 3 per week — spread and caused damage,” meaning they were “not contained” fires. These are deliberate acts to DESTROY houses of worship at 180 locations.
To ignore the links of terrorist individuals and groups to the destruction of these houses of worship is to ignore the obvious. Certainly, there are people who destroy houses of worship because they are deranged or for other reasons. But a deliberate attack to destroy a house of worship and terrorize a religious identity group is largely an act of terrorism. This is terrorism, regardless of your race, your religious identity, or your location in any part of the United States, and anywhere in the world. No one has a right to commit terrorism.
R.E.A.L. has previously posted about other attacks on American houses of worship, which we have seen too many times. This included attacks on houses of worship by Stormfront supporters and pro-Confederate terrorists Daniel Cowart and his partner Paul Schlesselman, who shot up the African-American Allen Baptist Church in Brownsville, Tennessee and also targeted an attack on 102 Christians in the Beech Grove Church of Christ in Tennessee; Cowart and Schesselman are currently in prison for their terrorism and terrorist plots. Stormfront members, stating they are part of the Confederate States of America (C.S.A.), defended Cowart and Schlesselman’s terrorism on churches, ending with quotes from the Confederate president Jefferson Davis, defending the cause of white supremacy. (The same Jefferson Davis you see highways named after and statutes defended in Richmond and other parts of the south.)
The pro-Confederate, white supremacist Stormfront organization (whose members have been repeatedly linked to terrorism) finds the burning of American churches to be a source of great amusement to them; one Stormfront member mocks the destruction of a church that “Lightning is an “Act of God”, isn’t it?”. This extremist group has members who laugh about the church fires. This includes Stormfront members who mock burning of African-American churches stating that “Obama probably just told them to burn down their own churches so he could funnel them money.” Stormfront members glamorize a box of matches on the racist website, writing “Unless they are used to set White people on fire, then it’s not a hate crime.”
We have reported on the praise by Confederate Stormfront members in the burning of African-American Christian Churches in the United States. Stormfront members finds the burning of American churches to be a source of great amusement to them; one Stormfront member writes “Burn Baby Burn,” regarding such churches while holding a Confederate flag.
Another Stormfront member mocks the destruction of a church (allegedly by lightning) that “Lightning is an ‘Act of God’, isn’t it?’. Other Stormfront members mock the arson and burning of African-American churches stating that “Obama probably just told them to burn down their own churches so he could funnel them money.” Stormfront members glamorize a box of matches on the racist website, writing “Unless they are used to set White people on fire, then it’s not a hate crime.”
Why do the Confederate racists mock such African-American church fires? Because they are convinced they can get AWAY with it, right in plain view of the public, and that the federal authorities will fail to act to stop such racist terrorism. They are convinced that the police in the South are more concerned about paint on the statue of Confederate traitors Jefferson Davis or Robert E. Lee than about protecting churches attended by African-Americans. So the Confederate racists at Stormfront post photos of matches and laugh about African-American churches burning down.
Yet our federal authorities with the resources of our nation cannot find “hate crime” motives in such contempt for African-Americans and churches across this nation. They need to find the aggressive motivation and organization of those who are determined to bring this to an end, and to publicly pursue such terrorists with the same vigor that other terrorists are pursued.
We would, of course, be rightly outraged at such a human rights crisis when it happens in Pakistan, Nigeria, Egypt, or any nation with minority houses of worship, which are attacked by terrorist individuals and groups. Human rights activists rightly call for that nation’s government to act to stop such human rights atrocities, in defiance of our universal human rights and the ICCPR. These human rights atrocities are not just a crime in those nations, they are also against INTERNATIONAL LAW.
Certainly, this must be the case in the United States of America as well.
Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.) calls for the voices of American human rights activists as well as worldwide human rights activists and the United Nations Human Rights Council for action. Given the continuing human rights violations against African-Americans in the United States of America, the failure of consistent application of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 regarding these violations, and a continuing state of intimidation against African-Americans by extremists, we call upon the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to monitor the human rights conditions in the United States of America — associated with institutional intimidation, oppression, and failure to protect houses of worship from acts of terrorism. We call upon the United Nations to monitor this human rights crisis, just as they would any other human rights crisis anywhere else in the world.
The United States government, and especially the state and local governments protecting Confederate white supremacist symbols, need to understand that, in addition to our law, there is international law and international standards, which we must abide to as global citizens.
The position of Responsible for Equality And Liberty on our shared universal human rights is that these rights must be consistent for all, everywhere, all the time. We urge an end to the hate and violence of the past. We call for patriotic Americans to defy those who seek to promote symbols of white supremacist hatred and slavery to degrade and intimidate others.
We urge the United States of America federal government to truly be aggressive and act to end these acts of racist terrorism against African-Americans and African-American churches. The promoters of white supremacist terrorism should not be able to making mocking threats with impunity. Our federal law enforcement needs to enforce the Civil Rights Act and end such threats against African-Americans and those who have fought for their freedoms.
Especially now, as we come on the eve of America’s independence day, defining values that we continue to seek, we call for American patriots to remember the words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
We need to continue to make the American idea and the words of our national declaration into a reality for all people, and be Responsible for Equality And Liberty.
