7. Black Fires: Crisis as Nadir and the Memory of Racial Violence in the South
Discourses of Crisis and the Study of Religion - Lauren Horn Griffin
Aaron Treadwell [+]
Middle Tennessee State University
Aaron Treadwell is assistant professor of History at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU). His current research interests include violence against African Americans, the Second Amendment's support within black churches, Southern history, African-American biographies, and the theological shift of Afro-Spirituality in the 19th century.
Description
In the summer of 1962, there were six major arson cases in Southern Georgia. These acts of terrorism became national news, and would receive a response from J. Edgar Hoover, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Jackie Robinson. This paper will examine the cause and effect of these acts of terrorism, with intention to express the theological reverberations of church fires. In the follow two months, six regional churches would face arson. By so doing, the epicenter for black resistance organization became ground zero arenas for racial war in southern Georgia.