Allen Temple AME Church in Greenville was evacuated after a bomb threat.
People were attending a vigil for the Charleston church shooting victims.
According to Greenville Police Chief Ken Miller authorities have been on the phone for the past hour with the person who made the bomb threat.
The man told police a description of a container the bomb is in and when it will detonate.
Bomb sniffing dogs have been also been called in.
There have been road closures due to the bomb threat. Vardry St from Green Ave to Anderson St and Green Ave from Vardry St to Markley St have all been closed.
I don't want to hear any more white denial or excuses or minimizing. I don't want to hear about how the Confederate Flag is merely a piece of cloth or how its legitimacy is for the people of South Carolina to discuss and determine.
Heidi Beirich, director of The Intelligence Project for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in Montgomery, Ala., says such groups have been growing over the past 10 years and "for several years South Carolina has been the place with the highest density of hate groups." The SPLC maintains an interactive map of hate groups in the United States.
The states with the highest number of hate groups by population density in the United States have traditionally been South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi, Ms. Beirich says. "There's been an ongoing backlash to the changes we're seeing in society. We're getting to be a more demographically diverse place…. So if you come from a tradition of racist beliefs and you see what's happening in this society right now, you're not happy about it.”
If there is to be a discussion about the legitimacy of the Confederate Flag by the people of South Carolina, are Black folks who live in South Carolina going to be part of that "discussion?
You know, the ones whose grandparents and great grand parents were held captive in slavery?
The folks whose family members had their children ripped away from them and sold for the highest price.
The ones whose mothers, sisters, daughters, and wives were raped.
Is any "discussion" about the place of the Confederate Flag open to the voices of those who died fighting against the South's fight for the right to enslave others?
Because that is what it was. That flag can be described in all the apologetics you wish - state's rights, independence, freedom, honoring your ancestors, etc. But the dark twisted heart of what that flag will always embody is the South's fight for the right to enslave human beings.
It was a fight that almost destroyed our Nation and cost the lives of hundreds of thousands.
And people are still dying. Nine were murdered last night in their church. Today, someone thought blowing up another church during a prayer vigil for last night's victims would be a good thing to do.
They wanted to blow up a church where people were praying. We shouldn't be surprised. At least 40 African American churches have been fire bombed during the last half century.
Sometimes When There's Racial Hate . . . There's Fire
Extra-legal violence has been an effective means of communicating racial hatred throughout American history, especially as a method of social and physical control. Fire in particular was used not only to inflict physical harm upon disfavored persons in communities, but to send messages which threatened further harm to either persons or property. The pages of American-African history document an undeniable record of the racially motivated use of fire to either threaten or inflict harm upon African- Americans.
During the Civil Rights Movement, "the church functioned as the institutional center" for Black mobilization. Churches provided "an organized mass base and meeting place," for African-Americans to strategize their moves in the fight against racial segregation and oppression. As Black Churches became the epicenter of the social and political struggles for African-American equality, they increasingly became targets for racially motivated violence. Thus, a broad assault on members of a Black community could effectively take place by burning a Black church. The bombing and burning of Black churches translated into an attack upon the core of civil rights activism, as well as upon the larger Black community.
The most infamous example of church destruction, occurred on Sunday, September 15, 1963. When the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, was fire bombed, the explosion was felt by the entire Black community. Not only were four children killed in the attack and several people injured, but a community's sense of security within their church was forever shaken....
The racism that gave unholy birth to the Civil War has never stopped. Mothers, Fathers, Grandparents, and Children are dying because of white racism. Mothers, Fathers, Grandparents, and Children live in fear, knowing they or those they love could be next.
Can you imagine living every day waiting to be pulled over for driving while black, for sitting while black, for walking home while black? Can you imagine wondering if your church, your sanctuary and solace, will turn into a killing field? Can you imagine living every day praying you don't get a phone call informing you of the shooting of a loved one? Can you imagine wondering if your little girl will return home from Sunday School in one piece?
How is this permissible? How do we walk away? How do we answer her cry?
None of it will stop until White America wakes up, finds its' courage, and does something about it.
All the crocodile tears and prayers won't change that fact.
Whether we like it or not, America's white Racism that began at its' founding must end with us.
The ball is in our court, right where it has always been. Without us, the white supremacists win. Without us the shootings and bombings will continue. Without us, the attacks on voting rights continue. Without us, Justice dies. It's that simple.
Stand up. Be counted. Refuse to be silent. Join the NAACP. Join the Moral Monday's Movement. Do something!
2:22 PM PT: Update: Honest to sweet lord. It has to stop and you're needed to make it stop.
Bomb threats reported at sites in South Carolina
"Several locations in South Carolina were subject to bomb threats Thursday afternoon in the wake of a shooting that killed nine people at a Charleston church Wednesday night...."