U.S. Investigating 7 Fires at Black Churches

WASHINGTON – The FBI is investigating seven fires at churches in black communities in the southern United States that broke out after the June 17 massacre of nine people at an historic African-American house of worship in Charleston, South Carolina.

The latest fire occurred Tuesday night at Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church in Greeleyville, a small town 120 km (75 mi.) from Charleston, local authorities said.

It is not yet known if this fire was the result of arson, but two of the other six fires being investigated certainly were.

The Mount Zion church, like hundreds of others since the first such fire for racist reasons in 1822, burned down once before in 1995, when two white youths with links to the Ku Klux Klan set it ablaze.

A year later, then-President Bill Clinton visited the rebuilt church and issued a call to the nation from there to unite against racism.

That fire was one of a series of at least 30 blazes in churches in black communities in the southern United States.

The social networks have erupted in outrage at the images of African-American churches in flames, which resurrect the worst fears of past racial violence in this country.

The incidents have come in the two weeks after the Charleston massacre, where 21-year-old white supremacist Dylann Roof shot to death nine worshippers, including the pastor, at Emanuel AME Church with the declared aim of sparking “a race war.”

“Racism, we are not cured of it,” President Barack Obama said in an interview just days after the Charleston shooting.

“The legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives, you know, that casts a long shadow, and that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on,” the nation’s first black president said.