GREELEYVILLE, S.C. (AP) – The Rev. John Taylor feared the worst when he learned his church was on fire, only days after a mass shooting at a black church in Charleston prompted Southern leaders to call for removing Confederate flags.
The Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church was burned to the ground by the Ku Klux Klan in 1995, one of many arsons at black churches that prompted President Bill Clinton to create a federal task force that led to hundreds of arrests.
“Of course we thought about it. We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t,” he said, standing in the hot sun outside the church’s charred shell on Wednesday. But Taylor also recalled the fierce lightning storm that blew through town about the time the fire began Tuesday night. “I really thought it probably was a lightning strike is what I thought.”
Preliminary indications suggest the Mount Zion fire was not the result of arson, according to a federal official who spoke with The Associated Press Wednesday on condition of anonymity, for lack of authority to discuss the case publicly.
More than a half-dozen fires at black churches have burned in the days since a white gunman was charged with murder in the shootings of nine black churchgoers in Charleston. Investigators have determined that several were intentionally set, but have yet to announce any evidence of racial motives.