The independent Black church’s freedom made it a persistent target of white violence.

Evidence

But the Black church has not only been a forum for righteous anger. Forged out of slavery, it was also a place of protection and practicality. For many decades it was one of the few places Black people could gather for educational purposes, to arrange mutual aid groups, or to form political organizations. As a result, it has always been a target. As an independent institution operating free of white control and oversight, the Black church had inherent revolutionary potential that often made it an object of white fear and anger. During the widespread violence that followed emancipation, the Ku Klux Klan burned scores of Black churches to the ground, eventually helping to extinguish the promise of Reconstruction. In the buildup to the Wilmington coup in 1898, white “citizens’ patrols” harassed Black churches where they suspected leaders were conspiring. During the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921, white people fired machine guns at the Mount Zion Baptist Church. And on September 15, 1963, members of the Ku Klux Klan bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, killing four little Black girls and injuring many other people. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1018

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in origin stories as infrastructure — church burnings across eras show a recurring violent pattern against the one Black institution free of white control.