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REPORT – In this archival photo of April 4, 2019, firefighters and fire investigators respond to a fire on Mt. The Pleasant Baptist Church in Opelousas, La. Authorities have arrested a person related to suspicious fires in three historic black churches in southern Louisiana, a federal prosecutor said. The suspect was in custody, US Attorney David C. Joseph announced Wednesday (April 10th) in a press release calling the fires "vile acts." (Leslie Westbrook / The Advocate via AP, File)
NEW ORLEANS – The crowdfunding campaign to raise money for three African American churches devastated by arson in Louisiana began a week ago, but donations increased after flames fell on the roof of Notre-Dame Cathedral. -Dame de Paris and the outcry provoked a debate on the disparate reactions following the tragedies.
Nearly one billion dollars had been announced for Notre Dame's reconstruction efforts just hours after Monday's fire. The massive attention paid to the French monument prompted Megan Romer to take note and tweet: "My heart is shattered by the loss of Our Lady.The Catholic Church is also one of the most If you are going to donate money to rebuild a church this week, I beg you to create the black churches of St. Landry Parish. "
GoFundMe spokeswoman Aja Shepherd confirmed in an email that the number of church donations destroyed in Louisiana had increased on Tuesday after Romer's tweet and the challenge launched by freelance journalist Yashar Ali to its nearly 400,000 subscribers on Twitter.
Other online reminders about the fate of black churches followed, including this tweet from Hillary Clinton's Tuesday: "While we hold Paris in our hearts today, let's also send a little bit of love to our neighbors in Louisiana. "
Donations totaling nearly $ 300,000 almost a week after the start of the campaign reached $ 1.5 million Wednesday night. The money must be distributed equitably among the three hundred-year-old churches to help them recover from intentional fires from March 26 to April 4. The white suspect, Holden Matthews, 21, was charged with arson and hate crimes.
Among the calls for more donations to black churches was the fear that they would already be forgotten as the flames burst from the roof of Notre Dame.
"It's terrible what happened to Our Lady … But three black churches in Los Angeles were deliberately set on fire because of hatred, let's not forget to be even more outraged about it." said the Twitter user, Joe Boyd.
Terrell Johnson, a 19-year-old Columbia University student and member of the Assiniboine tribe, wondered, "Why are we not so worried about these damaged sites that are historic for our minority groups, rather than for the majority groups? "
"It shows how much we are valued.These black churches, this mosque, these Native American sites are not as valued as Catholicism or Christianity, and it's frustrating," Johnson said in an interview Wednesday.
But the journalist Thomas Chatterton Williams, in a series of tweets, disputed the idea that worry about Notre Dame could be summed up to a race issue.
"It's a tragedy when black churches + mosques are bombed, burned or vandalized, but of course, the world is paying more attention to an 800-year-old architectural masterpiece set in the heart of the city. everyone visits Paris, love is not fooled, "he writes.
Reverend Roderick Greer of St. John's Cathedral, a place of episcopal worship in Denver, recognizes that Notre Dame enjoys greater visibility as a cultural, artistic and religious monument to the three rural churches of the St. Landry Parish, Louisiana.
Also in an interview Wednesday, he wondered if white Americans would be as attentive even though the fire was occurring in prestigious black churches, such as the Emanuel African Episcopal Methodist Church in Charleston in South Carolina, the Ebenezer Baptist in Atlanta or Birmingham in Alabama 16th Street Baptist Church.
"Even if Mother Emmanuel or Ebenezer or the 16 th Street Baptist Church caught fire, do White Americans, in particular, have the same emotional and visceral ties as those they have with Our Lady? , located on another continent? " said Greer. "It is such an eloquent commentary on the white American imagination that support for black churches lost as a result of arson arose as a result of a historic fire in the European cathedral."
Reverend Mason Jack, an officer of the Seventh District Missionary Baptist Association, which groups together the burned churches, said Wednesday that he was grateful for the increase in donations. He acknowledged that the fire of Notre Dame had raised awareness about the fires of Louisiana, but downplayed any fear that black churches would be overshadowed or forgotten.
He added that the publicity surrounding all the fires had increased awareness of the need in Louisiana. "Maybe for some, it was an awakening for them to bring healing and restoration," he said.
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Associate journalist Felicia Fonseca in Flagstaff, Arizona contributed to this story.
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