Standing on Holy Ground
A Triumph over Hate Crime in the Deep South
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A sweeping epidemic of hate crime targeted over one hundred Southern Black Churches between 1995 and 1996, leaving them in charred ruins. St. John Baptist Church in Dixiana, South Carolina, was one of the first destroyed. This small, isolated church had faced dark times before. It had been viciously desecrated in 1985 and withstood more attacks until it was burned down in August 1995.
From the beginning, two friends--a white woman named Ammie Murray, and a black woman named Barbara Simmons--rallied volunteers to rebuild the historic St. John. Much to their amazement, hundreds of people from diverse racial and cultural backgrounds responded to their call for help. They refused to stop rebuilding the church-despite repeated attempts on Ammie and Barbara's lives and relentless attacks on the church. Soon, these two heroic women joined the leaders and congregations from two other burned, black churches-Macedonia Baptist and Mt. Zion AME-in leading the nation in a courageous battle against hate crime in the deep South.
Beautifully rendered with warmth and grace, this inspiring story of enduring friendship, reconciliation, spiritual strength, and hope shows us how we can triumph over racial hatred.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In January 1985, Ammie Murray, a white labor organizer, committed herself to helping rebuild the primarily African-American South Carolina church of her friend Barbara Simmons after it suffered terrible vandalism. Johnson, a columnist for the State, South Carolina's largest newspaper, offers a journalistic account of their 13-year friendship and struggle the church underwent many more attacks including an arson that completely destroyed that is a shocking and ultimately heartening case study of political involvement, social action and religious faith. Johnson spins a far wider web and covers the rise of the Klan in the South; an enormous, seemingly planned, epidemic of vandalism inflicted upon Southern black churches in the 1980s and 1990s; and the complicated racial politics of the Southern law enforcement and legal system. She also draws on the personal stories of Murray, whose daughter nearly died in an automobile accident, and Simmons, whose troubled son is convicted of murder and whose case goes to the Supreme Court. Johnson, who herself got involved with the rebuilding efforts, has a superb sense of storytelling that dovetails with the terrifying facts of her story: Murray's involvement with the church's ongoing troubles generated such enormous hatred in the South Carolina town of Dixiana that she was verbally and physically harassed and her beloved pet dogs brutally murdered. By the end, the book becomes a stimulating whodunit and courtroom drama.
