THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, June 18, 1996 TAG: 9606180293
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CHARLISE LYLES, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: AIKEN, S.C. LENGTH: 116 lines
Black church burnings and troubled race relations are news to some in this rural county on the Georgia border.
``To tell you the truth, I haven't heard about any fires in Aiken,'' said Donald Fielder, a maintenance worker, in a Wal-Mart parking lot, one of the few places here in which blacks and whites congregate.
That response is common as Aiken finds itself in the middle of national attention brought on by 36 black church arson fires in the South in the past 18 months, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Federal officials suspect Ku Klux Klan involvement in some places. In others, whites have been arrested but race ruled out as a motive.
Like Hampton Roads, Aiken's sales pitch is quality of life. Several years ago, Money magazine listed it as one of the top 10 best places to retire. The 1,073-square-mile rural county of 132,000 is rapidly developing from a lush oak landscape of ``the lost cause'' to shopping malls and subdivisions. The economic hub is the Savannah River Site, a federally owned nuclear defense plant with 16,000 employees.
Now, as the South prepares to welcome the world to the Olympics in Atlanta, 200 miles west, Aiken is a global embarrassment. Six black churches have been attacked in Aiken since 1994, more than in any other county in the state, according to the Center for Democratic Renewal in Atlanta. Five burned. Another was vandalized, pews hacked and walls scrawled with racial slurs.
``Usually when the media calls us, it's about some award that we've won,'' said June Murff, president of the Aiken Chamber of Commerce. ``Now you're calling us about racism.''
The chamber's board has never discussed the church burnings, Murff said. ``I think in our hearts, we just hoped it would not continue.''
Neither the City Council nor the county commission has brought it up, members said. ``You have to be very cautious talking about race here,'' said Councilwoman Beverly Clyburn, who is black.
Willar Hightower, the only black memberon the county commission, said, ``This is something that I probably should have brought up.''
Officials at the Fire Department and sheriff's office, which investigates suspicious fires, were unclear on church locations and vague on investigation details. Funeral directors were most familiar with the addresses.
``There was no investigation, no nothing,'' said Edna Simmons, whose church burned down in February 1994. ``There have been a lot more than 34 fires,'' she said Sunday before news of additional fires.
Sheriff Howard Sellers was not available for comment, his spokesman said.
A state police officer spoke to church member John Simmons about the fire at his church for the first time last Tuesday, said Simmons, who is Edna's brother-in-law.
CNN and The State, a Columbia newspaper, have reported extensively on fires in Aiken, including front-page stories. But Jeffrey Wallace, managing editor of the 15,000-circulation Aiken Standard, said his newspaper covered the five fires as isolated incidents in the police briefs.
A local ecumenical group acknowledged that it had been slow to speak out about fires in Aiken and two neighboring counties.
In this 160-year-old peachtree belt known for Andy Griffith kindness and U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, there are painful reminders of the past. Still standing downtown is an arch through which three blacks fled a white mob in 1926. The mob caught them and shot them.
Tensions linger. Several years ago, a restaurant refused to admit a youth group that included two black boys.
``It was just something people can't forget,'' said Murff.
``The council is dealing with a race issue now,'' Clyburn said.
A year ago, taking a cue from a statewide race relations project, the chamber organized ``Imagine Aiken'' to promote racial harmony. Blacks complain that too few whites participated.
``They didn't show up: That means they didn't think there is a problem,'' said James Gallman, president of the Aiken NAACP. ``There is a problem.''
But efforts like ``Imagine Aiken'' and a state commission recently appointed by Gov. David Beasley are canceled out by symbols that blacks see as racist.
A black minister in a neighboring county led protests against ``The Redneck Store'' and Ku Klux Klan Museum. A few whites condemn the number of Civil War re-enactments, particularly one held at Christmas on a popular plantation, that glorify and romanticize slavery.
A club, Sons of the Confederacy, formed two years ago. Its insignia, a Confederate flag, hangs along with Kiwanis, Ruritan, Rotary and Sertoma club signs on roads leading into Aiken.
``We just study history and invite in speakers,'' said member Jeffrey Block, 36, a landscaper with long hair and a gold loop in one ear. ``It's not racial. One of my best customers is a black man, a doctor.''
Others say they are aware of an element capable of burning churches.
``It be people that probably like to, you know, go out and drink a few beers and just do some crazy things,'' said the white proprietor of McGee's Produce, a roadside stand of squash and watermelon.
Like burn down a church? ``Well . . . ,'' he laughed. ``Just seems like some people that want to call themselves redneck are kinda wild.''
A few residents are angry. ``The climate is getting meaner,'' said Art Dexter, a 73-year-old white research physicist at the Savannah River Site who is active in promoting race relations. ``People try to use things like affirmative action as an excuse. But this area is endemic with rednecks who have an attitude.''
Said Jeri Floyd, a black mother shopping with her baby, ``I hope it isn't racial. But, yes, I'm angry. They know that our spirit is with family and the church. Is our church the way that they feel they can weaken us down?''
But deeper than that, said Floyd, 31, an accountant, ``if people in this country are burning churches, our values are not in the right place.''
Murff, the chamber president, agreed. ``There's got to be something deep here.''
``We want people to come together to say what they really think,'' she said, ``then go out and see what they can do to change it.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
CANDICE C. CUSIC/The Virginian-Pilot
``Who can I get angry with?'' says the Rev. W.L. Mines, left, at the
site of the former Rock Hill Baptist Church in Aiken S.C., which was
burned in 1994. There are no plans to rebuild: Most of what the
church meant to its people can't be replaced. ``We loved it because
it was our history,'' says Mines' sister-in-law, Evelyn Medlock,
right.
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