Home-Grown Terror : Clinton presses effort to quell spree of arson at black churches

President Clinton will visit a rebuilt South Carolina church today and challenge Americans to address a national disgrace--a whirlwind of arson at black churches. Three have been torched this week, and 49 others have burned in the last 18 months. Even as the White House stepped up the federal investigation this month the arson attacks escalated. The “epidemic of terror,” to use the words of Deval Patrick, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, is concentrated in the South.

More than 200 agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which probes suspicious fires, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are teaming with local investigators to determine the causes of the fires. The full-court press is appropriate, though it should not have taken so long to get underway.

The NAACP, the Atlanta-based Center for Democratic Renewal and the Montgomery, Ala.-based Southern Poverty Law Center have been tracking church fires for several years. Civil rights advocates consider them racially motivated hate crimes and not random attacks. Federal agents say they have found no evidence of a national conspiracy. But many black Americans old enough to remember the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Ala., that killed four black girls are suspicious. During the civil rights movement, black churches were frequent targets of segregationists.

Federal agents weren’t always aggressive back then, and that legacy may haunt them today as they interview ministers and worshipers whose churches have been burned, some of whom have complained they have been intimidated and treated more like suspects than victims in the investigations. These and others may be reassured somewhat by the knowledge that federal agents thwarted a conspiracy by white supremacists to bomb the First AME Church in Los Angeles in 1993.

Since 1995, federal investigations of black-church arsons have resulted in seven arrests and two convictions. The most recent arrest, which came Monday, was that of a 13-year-old white girl in Charlotte, N.C. NationsBank, based in North Carolina, has offered a $500,000 reward for information on other fires.

The South Carolina church that Clinton is scheduled to visit is recovering from the ravage of arson. Other burned-out congregations need help. Toward that goal, the New York-based National Council of Churches is appealing for volunteers and $2 million in donations. The people of Los Angeles, which has its share of racial problems, should heed the call.