The National Coalition for Burned Churches (National Coalition or NCBC) was established in October 1997. It was a multi-racial, inter-denominational coalition of clergy, victims, and partners whose places of worship have been burned or firebombed throughout the U.S., primarily in rural, poor and isolated areas which was the NCBC’s geographic area of focus. With records starting from 1990, church burnings, bombings, and vandalisms affected communities all over the United States. These were crimes motivated by racial violence and anti-religious sentiment. In 1996, church arson was declared an issue by President Bill Clinton and became a national law enforcement policy under the Church Arson Prevention Act.

The organization was governed by a 17 member multiracial Board of Directors, led by Rev. Terrance G. Mackey, Sr., who served as President and Executive Director and a 10 member advisory council. Their constituency included burned church victims, children, youth and families in communities where churches were at risk of being burned, community based groups, civil and human rights organizations among many others.

The NCBC’s mission was to help empower and heal burned-church communities by providing support and assistance through programs in research, church rebuilding, community and youth leadership training, hate crime education and awareness, and public policy advocacy. Noteworthy programs and activities spearheaded by 1st VP and Director of programs Mrs.Rose Johnson-Mackey include the Church Burning Working Group, Community Empowerment Programs, and the Capacity Building Project.

The organization had much success receiving support and funding and were able to spread awareness nationwide through media briefings, a national Church Burning Registry, and conferences held in Atlanta, Texas, and Memphis. With the addition of a town hall meeting and Congressional Briefing on Capitol Hill in Washington, they were able to get government officials to improve their responsiveness to the church burning crisis. The organization was also able to conduct over 200 field investigations of hate directed violence and establish the Community Leadership Development Training School which served as a way to build up the emerging leaders in rural and isolated communities.

(Source; documents from collection)