Residents: Greenville not about hate

GREENVILLE — News of black church set ablaze in the Mississippi Delta with “Vote Trump” scrawled in white spray paint on the side made national headlines as rumors and assumptions quickly swirled.

The fire, labeled a “hate crime” by many, evoked memories of 1960’s Mississippi.

However, some locals aren’t so sure.

Born and raised in Greenville, Deborah Jackson, who is African American, said she does not feel the fire Tuesday was started “in racial hate.”

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“I think it was a cowardly act but at this point I don’t think it was a hate crime,” she said. “I feel like if it was going to be done as a hate crime, it would have been done in a different area. It’s not out in the open. This is in a secluded area. You would not know that church is over there unless you turned and went around there.”

Butting against railroad tracks in an older, wooded neighborhood, Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church is nestled on the back of a U-shaped street. Located off one of the main thoroughfares in Greenville, several people walked by the church in an hour span on Thursday; some to see the damage, many just passing through.

The front doors and several windows around the church are boarded up; yellow crime scene tape warns onlookers to stay back. The pitch of the roof sags; it has come apart from the supporting bricks. It’s unclear if cracks in the building are from the fire or age. Soot has blackened the windows but the white steeple stands tall above the damage, unscathed.

Next door, 23-year-old Kilean Coleman sat on his mother's front porch swing Thursday afternoon. The smell of smoke still hung in the air, the grass still saturated from the flood of water firefighters used to extinguish the blaze.

“It’s scary and shocking and then it’s right beside my mom’s house, so I’m paranoid a whole lot,” said Coleman, who wasn't visiting his mother when the fire started.

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Coleman, who is black, said he doesn’t believe the fire was started for racial reasons.

“They say it had something to do with racism but honestly I believe it was somebody close around here,” he said. “People say it was like some racist stuff but honestly, I feel like a black person did it.

Coleman said, because of the location of the church, people notice everyone who comes and goes.

“We don’t never see no white people out here, never,” he said. “If we see a white person around here, we’ll notice it. We can count them on one hand. They don’t come around here too much, every blue moon.”

He added, “I feel like if it was a white person, somebody would have noticed it.”

Greenville native Johnny Johnson drove by the church Thursday to see the damage for himself. Johnson, who is also African American, said he believes people may be incorrectly assuming the fire was a hate crime.

“People look at it as being a racial thing, but it could be anybody,” Johnson said. “There's racism in every state, in every town, really...It could be black or it could be white. No one can really say. Until facts come out, that’s the only way we can know for sure.”

The sentiment resonated outside of the neighborhood as well. In downtown Greenville, residents black and white said the church fire was a tragedy but questioned if it was motivated by race.

“Most people here don’t look at race as much as most people think we do,” store owner Miles Cobb said. “To me, Greenville is not that. It’s not a race thing. I think it was just vandals being vandals ... We have strengthened the bonds of both black and white. Too many people have come together as a whole.”

Cobb, who is white, said he feels the fire will help further unify the residents of Greenville.

Cobb’s wife, Donna Dotson Cobb, who is white, expressed disbelief and shock that someone would burn a church, regardless of race, religion or political motivation.

“Going around burning churches? For some kind of sick purpose?” Donna Cobb exclaimed. “This is wrong. Greenville has enough problems, we don’t need this. We’re just a small town with a good community trying to make it. Burning a church, it just galls me.”

Lucille Brown and her family were shopping at the couple'’s store Thursday afternoon.

Brown, who is black, believes that, while it’s “highly possible” the church burning was because of race, said, “that’s not us.” It's also not reflective of the state as a whole, she said.

“It’s not just a Mississippi thing," he said. "All across the country you have acts such as those, and I think in Mississippi, as you try to rise above, everybody is not going to be nice, everybody is not going to be communal, everybody is not going to be friendly. You’re going to have some good people, you’re going to have some bad people everywhere but because this is Mississippi and because it happened here, that makes us sound just bad.”

Referring to Cobb, Brown said, “I know that we are his customers, but he didn’t treat us like we are his customers. He treated us like, ‘Hey, we’re people.’ So, that’s what we do. We don’t look at each other and judge each other by appearance. To say that this is Mississippi and this is Greenville and it’s racist, it’s happens everywhere. Don’t just say it happens here. “

Brown said she had read comments online from people outside Mississippi. One person joked that the last time they were in Mississippi the state did not have paved roads.

“What year was that?” Brown asked.

Across the street, Teresa Ray, who is white, was also concerned about how the city was being portrayed nationally.

“It may have been racist on their part but not our part, not on the whole town's part,” Ray said. “It’s how people want to portray it, how they like to talk about the South being racist.”

Walking by the Rays, Joe Hewitt, who is African-American, said he feels the crime was motivated not by race but by “somebody being stupid.”

Jackson said she can’t fathom who would want to harm a place of worship, but she has faith the people of Greenville, black and white, will come together.

“We’re going to have crime, we’re going to have trials and tribulations, but it’s how you go through it. We’ve got to be strong.”

Contact Sarah Fowler at sfowler@gannett.com or 601-961-7303. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.