The Burning of Black Churches In Silence - Chris "Preach" Smith

Photo Credit: The Huffington Post

“America will tolerate the life the taking of a human life without giving it a second thought.
But don’t misuse a household pet.” - Dick Gregory


By the time you have begun to read this article, there will have been seven
Black churches in the Southern United States of America that have been burned
to the ground. SEVEN. All over the past few days going back to the aftermath of
the senseless murders of nine members of the historically Black Emanuel A.M.E.
Church in Charleston, South Carolina at the hands of a craven white domestic
terrorist who some media outlets claim had ‘apparent’ white supremacist leanings
despite publicizing his photo wearing a jacket bearing the apartheid-era South
African flag and the flag of Rhodesia. The heinous murderer Dylann Roof shot down
these nine people, including the pastor and state senator Clementa Pinckney.
The fires started on June 22nd, days after the horrific massacre and the calls for
the Confederate flag to be taken down from the state capitol being that it is a
symbol of racism. In those following days, the Confederate flag has been
yanked from stores, state parks, taken off license plates, stripped from flagpoles
and in one or two accounts, even from the skin of people ashamed to comprehend
what it truly means. They’ve even taken reruns of “The Dukes Of Hazzard” and the
General Lee off the air. And who can forget the sight of Bree Newsome scaling
the flagpole at the state capitol in South Carolina last weekend to take down the
flag? These events have been publicized, debated heavily and dissected across
networks and in columns. 

But seven Black churches burning in eight days? Scant notice.

When you consider that you’re just now seeing coverage of the church burnings
in mainstream media outlets in the past two days and these incidents began on
June 22nd? When you consider that it took the efforts of those on social media
platforms like Twitter to even catch the eye of certain journalists? It’s reprehensible.
Even now, there is a relative silence that is deafening. It comes from a good deal
of people in this country who would rather focus on anything else BUT the possibility
that these church burnings are yet another wave of white sponsored terror against
Black Southerners. Out of the seven church fires, the main culprit in the majority of
these incidents? Arson. But there are those who desperately want that not to be
the case. There are those who do not want to face the fact that there are certain
individuals who are setting fire to Black churches deliberately for the same reason
Roof walked into the bible study session at Emanuel A.M.E. It is the cold, cancerous
plaque of racism rearing its head once again. It is insulting to believe that these
fires are mere coincidence. Take the Mount Zion A.M.E. Church in Greeleyville,
South Carolina, the most recent of the church burnings. It caught fire twenty years
TO THE DAY that the Ku Klux Klan set fire to it twenty years ago. The incident even
led to the creation of a now defunct task force by then president Bill Clinton. Even
that lead photo above this article? That’s from a Black church burning in 1996. Yet
news outlets, in a facepalm worthy moment, are trying to parrot the line that it
could’ve been “struck by lightning.” This is how systematic racism gets bolstered.
I’m addressing it in these stark terms because there can be no other way to look at it.
We are in an American society that has chosen not to look at these incidents as 
another symbol of the failure of this country to effectively deal with racism. And in
doing so, we have begun to repeat history from decades and centuries ago.

Step back a moment and consider these incidents in this light - since the fledgling
years of this nation’s origin, as long as there have been Black churches, there has 
always been a vanguard of those whites who wanted to destroy them and their
purpose. The first such recorded instance took place in 1822. In South Carolina.
It might also interest you to know that 1822 was the same year that Denmark
Vesey, a Black man who bought his freedom and founded Emanuel A.M.E. Church
was caught and executed for attempting to orchestrate possibly the largest slave
revolt in the nation. The reality that exists here is that as long as there has been
Black resillience and excellence in this nation, there has always been reprisals borne
out of illogical fear and hatred. These church burnings are no different. Yet the
silence surrounding them has made more noise than the violent screeches of 
ignorant individuals holding “Southern Pride” rallies over the past few days in response
to calls to do away with the Confederate flag. You’ve seen them - unwashed,
loud, infantile and petulant in their cries that ‘the flag has nothing to do with
slavery!!!’ Despite the expressed historical evidence to the contrary. And as much
as it would be easy to claim that only the rednecks and outed white supremacists
are the major culprits, it would ignore the fact that the silence of certain sections
of the Christian faith in this nation, be they indifferent or willfully ignorant, has
caused the most noise. You begin to ask yourself - if it were Islamic State-coddled
homegrown agents assaulting churches with predominately white congregations -
if the weight of the Green Berets wouldn’t be exercised? Hell, there’s a federal
manhunt, yes, a federal manhunt for the person who they feel set fire to the CVS
drugstore during the unrest in Baltimore months ago conducted by the ATF. But
these church fires aren’t yet getting a full federal investigation.You begin to wonder
how Pat Robertson, who has all the time in the world to contemplate if same-sex
marriage will lead to more Christians engaging in anal intercourse, hasn’t said one
word about these incidents on “The 700 Club”? You wonder if Creflo Dollar, the
slick televangelist who recently begged his flock to help him purchase a $65 million
dollar private jet, is even going to mention any of these churches? There have been
a few pastors and churches who have decried these church burnings and called them
out as acts of racial terror. But again, not nearly enough.

Photo Credit: The Washington Post

The seven Black churches being set ablaze need to be fully investigated by federal
authorities. In a taut and charged climate, these incidents cannot be ignored. In an
ideal world, every candidate running for President including the fourteen currently
running on the Republican ticket should be pressed about these church burnings at
every opportunity. What the powers that be have been counting on is the story
dying out. That there won’t be sustained pressure on officials in the Justice Department
to investigate. I know the knee-jerk response is, “what do you expect the government
to do?” My rebuttal is, “maybe more than the ego-stroking you might be content to
do instead of keeping that pressure on them.” Look at the issue of the Confederate
flag - people got outraged enough about the flag of secession being flown over good
souls callously murdered that stores and brands are rushing to get it out of sight.
That same energy, that same insistence needs to be behind the push to get these
burnings investigated again. Because each one, is one too many. And we’ve come
too far down the road to let the petulant and dangerous bigots attempt to turn
back the clock.