According to the National Park Service, Ebenezer Baptist Church is where Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was baptized as a child, ordained as a minister at age 19, and his funeral was held there in 1968.
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ATLANTA – Four Confederate flags were placed outside of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s church here Thursday.
The backlash against it grew when nine black people were shot dead at a South Carolina church in June.
Surveillance cameras captured two white men laying the flags on the ground, and if the men are caught, police are considering hate crime charges.
“After this horrific act in Charleston, in the wake of all that’s happening in our country…” Three flags were placed on the church’s grounds, the other near the MLK Visitor Center.
Since the church shooting in Charleston, Warnock said that Ebenezer has been in the process of upgrading its security protocols. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta.
Nearby resident Tracey Jackson said the attack breaks her heart.
This is not the first time the Confederate flag has been left here on these federal grounds. A maintenance man discovered the flags at around 6 a.m., The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) reports, finding one beneath a poster that read “BLACK LIVES MATTER, HANDS UP”.
But some legal experts say the act may violate laws against church vandalism, although nothing was damaged or permanently scarred.
But Ken Hodges, former Dougherty County district attorney, told the news organization that prosecutors might get a vandalism charge to stick.
In comparison with waving flags on private property, the surreptitious placing of the flags at a historic civil rights site is more vexing. “But also a deep recognition within ADL, the civil rights portion of ADL, that sees it as nothing but a hate symbol”. “They were clearly trying to send a message”. There was no indication that was connected to the flags.
“As the pastor of this church, I view it as an effort to intimidate us in some way, but we will not be intimidated”, he said at a press conference.
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“It was disturbing and sickening, but unfortunately not terribly surprising”, Warnock says of the latest incident.
