Notes From D.R. | Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene

Will Deval Patrick ever apologize for his role in the great church-arson hoax of 1996?

A decade ago, the daily papers and nightly news broadcasts were filled with reports of black churches being torched throughout the South, an epidemic rivaling that of the horrid church burnings of the 1960s. Civil rights leaders denounced the church fires and insisted that the dark soul of racism had once again possessed America. President Clinton commissioned a task force to investigate the church fires. And Patrick, then the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the Justice Department, declared the church fires "an epidemic of terror," concluding that "many, if not most, of the fires are driven by racial hostility."

Except that wasn’t exactly the case.

As Clinton’s task force concluded in 1998, "…the cases closed and the charges that have been filed to date do not support the theory that these fires were the product of a broad or nationwide conspiracy." The Associated Press had concluded earlier that there was "…little hard evidence of a sudden wave of racially motivated arsons against black churches in the South. . . . There is no evidence that most of the seventy-three black church fires recorded since 1995 can be blamed on a conspiracy or a general climate of racial hatred. Racism is the clear motivation in fewer than twenty cases." Even USA Today–the newspaper that primarily pushed the resurgence-of-racism angle in its coverage of the church fires–eventually acknowledged that the many of the church fires could not be linked to a racial conspiracy. (As Michael Fumento has noted, the claim that the majority of the fires were racially motivated was based on what could charitably be called inaccurate information).

It’s hard to believe Mr. Patrick has never acknowledged that his conclusions about the church fires were faulty. Isn’t it about time that somebody asks him to clarify things a little bit?

UPDATE: Just as I figured, Deval continues the lie.