wfn.org | NCCCUSA CONVENES PASTORS OF BURNED CHURCHES IN D.C. JUNE 9-10

[CAROL_FOUKE.parti@ecunet.org]

National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.
Contact: Carol J. Fouke, NCC, 212-870-2252
Internet: carol_fouke.parti@ecunet.org

63NCC6/6/96                   FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NCC TO CONVENE PASTORS OF BURNED CHURCHES
IN D.C. JUNE 9-10;
LATEST STEP IN BROAD EFFORT TO STOP THE ATTACKS,
PURSUE JUSTICE

 Continuing its comprehensive response to the
epidemic of racist attacks on Black churches, the
National Council of Churches (NCC) will bring more
than 30 pastors from burned and vandalized churches
to Washington, D.C., June 9-10 to meet with each
other and with top government officials, including
Justice and Treasury department heads.

 "They will come to the nation's capital seeking
answers and explanations, but more importantly, they
will come seeking to be taken seriously by the
highest authorities of the land," according an NCC
statement.  The pastors will:

* Meet with U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno at 2
p.m. Sunday, June 9, at the Justice Department,
where they will describe what happened to their
churches, including evidence of racist motivation
for the attacks, and share their dissatisfaction
about the nature of the federal, state and local
investigations.

* Participate in an ecumenical worship service/rally
at 7 p.m. Sunday, June 9, at the Pleasant Lane
Baptist Church, 501 "E" St. S.E., Washington, D.C.
Pastors from burned churches will speak and an NCC-
led team will describe its work to investigate and
stop the attacks and help rebuild the churches.

* Meet with Secretary Richard Rubin at the Treasury
Department from 9:15 to 9:45 a.m. Monday, June 10.

* Give a news conference at 10 a.m. Monday, June 10,
at the National Press Club, 529 14th St. N.W.,
Washington, D.C.  Pastors from burned churches will
speak.  The NCC-led team will release the latest
results of its own first-hand investigations of the
attacks on churches, announce legal strategies
against perpetrators of the attacks and talk about
future plans.

* Meet with members of Congress Monday afternoon,
June 10.

 An NCC-led team has been investigating the
burnings, firebombings and other attacks since late
last year and visiting affected communities since
early March.  The team, which includes the Center
for Democratic Renewal, Atlanta, and the Center for
Constitutional Rights, New York, also is providing
spiritual, legal and material support to stop the
attacks and rebuild the churches.

 "These are human-made, unnatural disasters,"
says the Rev. Dr. Mac Charles Jones, NCC Associate
for Racial Justice and Pastor of St. Stephen's
Baptist Church in Kansas City, Mo.  "These are not
isolated incidents but rather domestic terrorism and
intimidation of whole communities."

 As of June 5, the Center for Democratic Renewal
had documented 59 churches burned and four
vandalized since January 1990, with 28 of the 59
burned since January 1996.  The Center has found a
"strong connection between church attacks and white
supremacist groups."

 Since early March, NCC-led teams have visited
many of the burned churches across the South,
including in Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina,
Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.  On
all visits, the team goes to the sites of churches
that have been destroyed or damaged to gather first-
hand testimony from pastors, deacons and other
members of these churches.

 In written testimony submitted to the May 21
House Judiciary Committee hearing on the attacks on
churches, National Council of Churches President
Melvin G. Talbert and General Secretary Joan Brown
Campbell said the NCC-led team had uncovered
"striking similarities in these incidents, parallels
that constitute a pattern of abuses."

 These similarities include "the use of molotov
cocktails and other incendiary devices, the spray
painting of racist grafitti, the targetting of
churches with a history of strong advocacy for
African American rights, and racist notes and
letters left in the mailboxes of pastors.  Many
churches were attacked on or around January 15,
Martin Luther King Jr. Day (five of those in 1996
and five in 1995)."  Several persons so far arrested
and/or convicted for these crimes admitted to be
members of such racist groups as the Aryan Faction,
Skinheads for White Justice and the Ku Klux Klan.

 Many local officials have told victims that
theirs are isolated cases, the results of accidents
or electrical fires, the NCC-led team visits have
found.  Several pastors reported that racial
epithets scrawled onto the remaining facades of
their churches were immediately painted over by law
enforcement officials without their church's
consent.  Many of the pastors and other church
leaders have received death threats, but "there have
been no investigations of these threatening calls
and no protection has been offered."  In many cases,
investigations have focused on the pastors and
members of the burned churches rather than on the
violent history of the above-mentioned racist
groups.

 The National Council of Churches, with
headquarters in New York City, has 33 Protestant and
Orthodox member denominations (total constituency:
52 million) including most of the nation's historic
African American denominations.  From its formation
in 1950, the NCC has spoken and acted consistently
and forcefully for racial justice and civil rights
against racism.

 The Center for Constitutional Rights, a public
interest law group, has successfully brought civil
suits against the Klan and is preparing to bring
legal action against perpetrators of the church
attacks.  The Center for Democratic Renewal
(formerly the National Anti-Klan Network) is a
leader in the monitoring of white supremacist
activity.

 The NCC has established the Burned Churches
Fund (Attn. Joan Campbell, NCC General Secretary,
Room 880, 475 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10115)
to help rebuild destroyed and damaged churches and
to support the larger campaign to stop the attacks.

Contact: Carol J. Fouke, NCC-N.Y., 212-870-2252
or Omni Shoreham 6/8-11, 202-234-0700
Don Rojas, NCC-D.C., 202-544-2350
or Omni Shoreham 6/8-10, 202-234-0700

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