Another black church burnt down

An African-American church in South Carolina that was burnt down by the Ku Klux Klan in 1995 caught fire again on Tuesday night, though authorities said it was too soon to say what caused the latest blaze, which broke out on a night of frequent storms. No one was believed to be inside at the time.

The fire at the Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal church in Greeleyville broke out at a time when federal authorities are investigating conflagrations at several other predominantly black churches — including one Friday at a church near Aiken, South Carolina — but so far the fires don’t appear to be related.

Greeleyville is a town of about 400 people around 80km north of Charleston, where a pastor and eight members of a historic black church were fatally shot on June 17 in what authorities are investigating as a hate crime.

Agents from the State Law Enforcement Division were on their way to the church before the fire was out, Division Chief Mark Keel said. But he said they will have to wait until the hot spots are extinguished before using dogs and other investigative tools to figure out what started it.

“We do know they apparently had some strong storms,” Keel said. “Talked to a guy who said they had a lot of lightning down there tonight. I don’t know whether that had anything to do with it at all.”

The image of orange flames coming from the same church the KKK burnt down 20 years ago brought up painful memories, said Williamsburg County Councilman Eddie Woods junior, who got out of bed to drive to the church after hearing about the fire.

“That was a tough thing to see,” Woods said. “It is hurting those people again. But we’re going to rebuild. If this was someone, they need to know that hate won’t stop us again,” Woods said.

All of the fires currently under investigation broke out days after the fatal shootings at Charleston’s historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.