Church Fires Conjure Flashbacks of Racist Past

Feb. 8, 2006 — -- The rash of church fires in Alabama has conjured memories of a segregationist Southern past when the Ku Klux Klan and other racist groups and individuals targeted places of worship in the African-American community.

FBI investigators suspect the burning of four predominantly black churches on Tuesday -- the same day as the funeral of Coretta Scott King -- and the torching of five churches (four predominantly white and one black) last Friday may be linked. However, they haven't ruled out the possibility that Tuesday's fires were copycat attacks. State and federal investigators have offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to arrests, and FBI investigators have looked into whether the fires constitute civil rights violations under laws pertaining to attacks on religious property.

The fires have left many people in rural Alabama scared and shaken.

"The person that did this is a person that's full of hate, a person that's full of hate doesn't know God," said the Rev. James Posey, pastor of Morningside Baptist Church, one of the churches that burned down Tuesday. "It's a hard thing. It's a hard thing to swallow."

Targeting the Soul of African-American Communities

Attacking churches -- especially those in the African-American community -- is seen as an instant way of stirring fear. Places of worship are considered the heart and soul of many African-American communities, and served as sanctuaries -- places of refuge and comfort -- from the institutionalized racism blacks faced every day and as places to meet and organize during the fight for civil rights

Here is a look at some infamous past attacks on churches -- and what happened to those found responsible:

Edgar Ray Killen and the "Mississippi Burning" case — The subject of the 1988 movie "Mississippi Burning," the case involved the 1964 deaths of two white New Yorkers, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney, a black man from Meridian, Miss. Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney were participating in "Freedom Summer," an event in which young people from around the country came to the South to register black voters.

On June 21, the men were driving on Mississippi back roads to investigate a torched church that was to have been home to a school. Before they reached the church, police pulled them over for speeding and threw them in jail. When they were released hours later, two carloads of Ku Klux Klan members followed them, beat them, dumped their bodies in a church and torched the building. The bodies of the three men were not found for 44 days.

The state never charged anyone, and federal statutes against murder did not exist at the time. Instead, the federal government tried 18 men, including former Klan member, preacher and saw mill operator Edgar Ray Killen, on charges of conspiring to violate the civil rights of the victims. During a 1967 trial, former Ku Klux Klansman James Jordan testified that Killen had told the men involved that deputies "had three of the civil rights workers locked up, and we had to hurry and get there and we were to pick them up and tear their butts up."

Ultimately, seven men were convicted and served prison sentences of no more than six years. Eight, including Killen, were acquitted.

Almost 40 years later new evidence surfaced, and Killen was tried for manslaughter in the deaths of Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney. On June 21, 2005, 41 years after the deaths, he was convicted of three counts of manslaughter. At age 80, he is serving a 60-year sentence and will likely die in prison while appealing his case.

The Birmingham Church Bombings — On Sept. 15, 1963, four African-American girls -- 11-year-old Denise McNair and 14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Carole Peterson and Cynthia Wesley -- were killed when a bomb exploded at Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church during the height of the city's civil rights unrest. The church was a popular rallying site for black demonstrators, and the bombing was considered a pivotal turning point that fueled the civil rights movement.

Justice long delayed but ultimately delivered.

Robert Chambliss, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, was tried for murder and found not guilty less than a month after the bombing. He was fined $100 and sentenced to six months in jail for possessing dynamite. However, Chambliss was eventually retried, and in 1977 was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. He died behind bars in 1985.

In 2000, the case was reopened and in the two years that followed Bobby Frank Cherry and Thomas Blanton were each convicted of murder in the bombing and sentenced to life in prison. Blanton continues to serve his life term, but Cherry died in 2004. Cherry's attorneys have been trying to clear his name since his death and the Alabama Supreme Court refused to void his conviction on Jan. 27.

The Macedonia Baptist Church vs. the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan —On June 21, 1995, authorities say, members of the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan used flammable liquid to burn down the 100-year-old Macedonia Black Baptist Church in South Carolina. The church was one of several burned by arsonists in the mid-1990s.

The Southern Poverty Law Center brought civil suit against the Christian Knights on behalf of the Macedonia Baptist Church. In July 1998, after a five-day trial, a jury rendered the largest judgment ever against a hate group, ordering the Christian Knights, its state leader and several Klansmen to pay $37.8 million for their roles in a conspiracy to burn the church. The judgment severely crippled the Klan group.