Arson investigators are positive the Hopewell Mission Baptist Church in Greenville, Mississippi, was intentionally set alight Tuesday. Left behind on an outside wall was spray-painted “Vote Trump.” Burning black churches has a long and sinister history in the South, part of the racist terrorism that has plagued the region since Reconstruction. Though such acts are a good deal rarer than they once were, last summer black churches in South Carolina, Tennessee, and Florida were torched.
In the Hopewell fire, nobody was injured or killed.
Law enforcement in the heavily black city is investigating this as a hate crime, but they have yet to learn who set the church on fire. But The New York Times reported on a nauseating and familiar response from on high:
Mississippi’s secretary of state, Delbert Hosemann, said Wednesday that he had been in contact with “authorities in Greenville” and the state Highway Patrol about the attack. Those discussions led him to believe that the burning and vandalism were not committed by “somebody of a political nature,” he said.
“The initial work here indicates this is not of a political nature even though there may be something that says ‘Vote Trump’ on the side of the church,” said Mr. Hosemann, a Republican. “So everybody needs to calm down here until we get to the bottom of this.”
Stay calm. This isn’t political. This isn’t racial. FFS, Mr. Hosemann. Get a clue.
As Emma Green writes at The Atlantic:
This act comes with heavy symbolism in the United States. Black churches have long been burned in acts of intimidation and hatred; in the Jim Crow South, members of hate groups would leave flaming crosses on churchyard lawns. The bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, came at a time of extreme racial division in the United States; it was that crime, which killed four young black girls, that led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. “The black church has always been a symbol of the community,” Simmons said during a press conference. When he met congregants in Hopewell M.B. Church on Tuesday night, “I talked to folks who were fearful. I talked to folks who were. intimidated. And quite frankly, [they] were saddened and crying,” he said. “That should not happen in 2016. It happened in the ’50s. It happened in the ’60s. But it should not happen in 2016.”
Indeed, it should not happen. The fear is well-grounded. But it’s not the only emotion sparked by such incidents. Rage is fear’s righteous partner. And public officials shouldn’t be shushing people and telling them to calm down in these circumstances.