THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 23, 1996 TAG: 9606230170
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Paul South
LENGTH: 53 lines
A few weeks back in a Manteo courtroom, two lawyers were methodically going about the business of jury selection. The eyes of lawyer G. Irvin Aldridge zeroed in on a man in his 40s on the back row of the jury box.
``Where do you feel safe?,'' Aldridge asked
``In church,'' the man replied.
Most folks feel safe in houses of worship. Older people, who may spend a good part of their week alone, can count on a kind word or a smile.
Young families can take their toddlers to a nursery where the infants can sleep peacefully. Meanwhile, parents with bowed heads and hearts seek help in time of trouble.
And slightly older children, on whom the sermon is lost, can often curl up in the safety of their mother's lap, for a peaceful nap.
In the church pew, it's a pretty good bet you won't get mugged, robbed or shot.
But in churches from North Carolina to Texas to Oregon, good people are wondering if even church is a haven from the violence staining the fabric of our national life.
Houses of God are burning again in America.
Churches, most of them with predominantly African-American congregations, are the innocent targets. At this point, federal investigators are scrambling to determine if these acts are the work of racists. But with the arrest of two black suspects in a North Carolina fire, racism may not be the only motive. No color has a monopoly on violence or hatred.
What's especially chilling about these blazes is conjured from memory. Black churches and Jewish synagogues were bombed and burned with regularity in the South of the 1960s. The burning crosses of 1996 are troubling, because it means the same evil that killed four little girls in a Birmingham church 33 years ago still runs rampant, tearing at the souls of good and decent people everywhere.
Sometimes it seems that things haven't changed much.
But those in need of comfort in these unsettling days can find a nugget of hope today on Roanoke Island. Blacks and whites will join in celebrating the memory of the Freedman's Colony, a community of free blacks that flourished here from 1862 until 1867.
Perhaps 1,000 people will be there to sing, to pray, to celebrate and to remember.
It is a story most of the national media will miss. But it's worth telling for one compelling reason.
On the long road to reconciling the races, the church fires have slammed America into reverse.
But today, on a little island in North Carolina, the nation takes a quiet step toward viewing each other by what we carry in our hearts, not by the color of our faces. by CNB