Pastors Put Arson On National Agenda Clinton To Visit Charred Church; Arrests Made In Latest Fires

After months of frustration as their churches were being burned by arsonists, black Southern ministers ended a mission in the U.S. capital Monday that succeeded in putting their plight squarely before the nation.

In the wake of two more arson fires at Southern black churches, the White House announced Monday that President Clinton will travel Wednesday to the site of a charred church in South Carolina to urge racial tolerance.

The announcement came as a 13-year-old white girl was arrested on charges of torching a black church sanctuary in Charlotte, N.C., last Thursday night and as police in Greenville, Texas, questioned two whites and one Hispanic man about a pair of blazes set at black churches there early Monday morning.

In Washington, pastors from many of the burned churches met with federal officials Monday and demanded more aggressive federal investigation into what the pastors maintain is a systematic campaign by white supremacist groups to target black houses of worship.

“We come in great pain, frustration, anguish and disappointment,” said the Rev. Spiver Gordon of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Eutaw, Ala., at a news conference. “Not enough intensive investigation has occurred in order to stop what’s going on.”

White House aides said that Clinton will travel to Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church in Greeleyville, S.C., which was set ablaze on June 20, 1995, and is now being rebuilt. He had mentioned this church in his Saturday radio address.

“We need to come together as one America to rebuild our churches, restore hope, and show the forces of hatred that they cannot win,” Clinton said Monday in San Diego.

White House press secretary Michael McCurry said, “There has been an unprecedented federal response involving the Treasury Department, the Justice Department, (and) very strong coordination with local law enforcement.”

The tally of church fires varies according to the source: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms counts 30 suspicious Southern arsons since 1990, while the Center for Democratic Renewal, a group that monitors extremists and has undertaken its own investigation, counts 46 church fires in South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi.

There have been 28 fires this year alone, a pace of about one a week, according to the center’s count.

The group of pastors Monday castigated federal officials, the church community and black America for failing to respond with more urgency to what the pastors say are the most coordinated violations of black civil rights since the 1960s.

“Our communities are being terrorized, and we cannot allow it to continue,” said the Rev. Reggie White, associate pastor of The Inner City Church in Knoxville, Tenn. “If we don’t take care of it now, our children are going to adopt these attitudes and when they grow up they are going to destroy America if we don’t do anything about it.”

Black congregations across the South fear they cannot protect their churches and want greater federal intervention, said the Rev. Mac Charles Jones, racial justice associate for the National Council of Churches (NCC). “If it means the National Guard, so be it,” Jones said. “If it means declaring a state of emergency, so be it.”

The NCC, which brought the pastors to Washington, is hoping to use the arsons as a rallying cry for racial solidarity reminiscent of the civil rights movement. The group has pledged to raise $2 million from its members, coming from 33 different denominations, to help rebuild the churches, and is calling on skilled crafts people to travel south this summer to help the reconstruction effort.

In meetings Sunday with Attorney General Janet Reno and Monday with Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, the pastors complained that investigators have inappropriately scrutinized members and leaders of the churches themselves. One pastor said his daughter had been pulled out of school for questioning; another said his church’s ledger books were inspected.

“About 50 percent of the pastors feel they were intimidated and that the investigation got focused on them,” the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, said in an interview after the news conference. “The problem is that if they get questioned and looked at as suspects, they will be looked at suspiciously in their communities.”

Rubin, in a lunch with Post reporters, said that “the people investigating need to follow every single lead wherever it may go. On the other hand, I think they have to do so with enormous sensitivity to the people who understandably … have good reason to be skeptical about an awful lot of things with respect to law enforcement.”

The teenage girl arrested in Charlotte Monday has been charged as a juvenile and is being held for a later hearing. “This is a very troubled 13-year-old,” said Larry Snider, deputy chief of police in Charlotte-Mecklenburg.

At this point, investigators say there’s no evidence that the fire was racially motivated or that it’s connected to any local or national conspiracy.

The two fires early Monday in Greenville were the first reported in Texas. In those cases, the three men were held because their car matched descriptions supplied by a witness.