'We tend to think of churches and religious spaces as somewhat protected. But these burnings, they do tend to send a different message ... That message is, blackness isn’t safe, anywhere.” - NBCBLK
But the magnitude of the loss and the reasons black churches may have been a target are much more clear.
Firefighters and fire investigators respond to a fire at Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church in Opelousas, Louisiana, on April 4, 2019.The church staff members are paid by black people and therefore attuned to their interests and experiences. That means black church pastors are often in the rare social and economic position to speak publicly about controversial matters and turn black churches into gathering spaces and rallying points for those engaged in various forms of protest and social change.
Mount Pleasant, a church with about 150 official members and 60 to 70 people in its pews most Sundays, once served as a school for black children. Today, its doors open mostly for choir rehearsals and church services. But it remains a gathering place in a rural community, a valued space in a sparsely populated but expansive parish.
While there’s nothing going on in St. Landry that, to Hines, immediately explains what seems like a targeted campaign to destroy black churches, there are broader trends that do, he said. For Pinn, the burned churches brought to mind the nation’s history of destructive force and attempted control directed at black churches.
Churches that had in some cases formed in secret became public and physical institutions. The nation’s new multiracial electorate — a group that in some Southern states was majority black — installed black state and federal lawmakers who, before the Civil War, were widely regarded as imbeciles and animals.
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