Late Tuesday night, the Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in Greenville, Mississippi caught fire. When fire crews arrived to put out the blaze, they found that the words “Vote Trump” had been spray-painted on the side of the historic black church.
Officials consider the fire, which significantly damaged the church’s sanctuary, to be of “suspicious” origin. During a press conference Wednesday morning, Greenville Mayor Errick D. Simmons said that “heinous, hateful, and cowardly act” is being investigated as a hate crime.
This is so heartbreaking. Not so much for the message on the building, but this is a church that's been around for so long in the community. pic.twitter.com/h8hJqoOgpH
— Angie Quezada (@imangieq) November 2, 2016
Pastor Carolyn Hudson of Hopewell M.B. Church also spoke. “The act that has happened have left our hearts broken, but we’re strong together,” she said. “And we do believe that God would allow us to build another sanctuary in that same place, because our church was an historic church. It had been there over 111 years. Our hearts are broken. We’re not angry, but we are sad.” The church has about 200 members.
Simmons said that there haven’t been any similar incidents in Greenville recently, but that the city’s boat ramp on the Mississippi river was vandalized with the n-word on September 11. He described such acts as “an attack, a strategy — an evil one” to impose fear on people.
“The only thing that conquers hate is love,” said Simmons. “Community must come together and show basic love and dignity to each other.”
Over the course of the 2016 election, numerous white nationalist groups have come forward to support Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. The same day the fire was set, the Ku Klux Klan’s newspaper, The Crusader, endorsed Donald Trump for president. (Trump’s campaign called the endorsement “repulsive” in an unsigned statement.) Likewise, Trump is one of the most popular topics among white nationalists online.
Trump’s campaign is led by Steve Bannon, currently on leave from Breitbart News, where he is executive chairman. Former Breitbart editor-at-large Ben Shapiro has accused Bannon of turning the site into a clearinghouse for white nationalist content.
A GoFundMe page has been created to help raise money to repair the church.
UPDATE: Speaking to the New York Times, Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann (R) insisted, “The initial work here indicates this is not of a political nature even though there may be something that says ‘Vote Trump’ on the side of the church, so everybody needs to calm down here until we get to the bottom of this.”
UPDATE: On December 21, police arrested Andrew McClinton on charges of first degree arson in this case. McClinton is an African-American man who belongs to the parish he is suspected of targeting. According to Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney, the attack was likely not politically motivated, although “there may have been some efforts to make it appear politically motivated.”