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	Understanding Hate     How Hate Stalks The Vulnerable     Wanda Mitchum Interview   Why Burn Churches?     The Making of A Skinhead     Web of Hate   Responding To Hate     Heroes Against Hate     Resources for Responding     Fighting Hate     National Response		As a child, Tim Welch used to sit in the pecan tree outside Macedonia Baptist Church, listening to hymns and waiting for his friend to come out and play. Why Burn Churches?   CLIPS (Get RealPlayer) TIMOTHY WELCH Arsonist, Inmate Audio | Video REVEREND MOUZON Macedonia Baptist Church Audio | Video Forgotten Fires helps viewers recognize some motives and origins of hate crimes. One significant cause is poor whites' experience of being locked out of the economic opportunities available to the white working and middle classes. Rural communities suffer from geographic isolation as well as lack of economic and community opportunities that are available to the urban poor. In addition, rural communities have long memories of hate, distrust, and family feuds. Living in isolation often allows hate-filled rhetoric to take hold as it did in the cases of these rural church-burnings. The church, as well as the school, are the centers of community life in rural communities. When the church is destroyed, it will often either unite or disintegrate the community. Forgotten Fires depicts the pressure of local history on poor rural whites, their boredom, the prevalence of abuse, the accessibility of alcohol and weapons, and the tacit approval of racism by middle class whites. The presence of the Ku Klux Klan, isolation from mainstream society, repeated hate talk, and the envious recognition that the Black Church sustains its community both economically and spiritually all these factors are combustible elements that lead to church arson. While the members of the Klan shown in Forgotten Fires are poor whites, it is also important to note that hate groups recruit from all classes. Although poverty provides one avenue into scapegoating and hatemongering, it is by no means the only one. In its close examination of a particular event, Forgotten Fires raises bigger questions. Who has forgotten these fires? Not the African-American community. Not the Klan. The media has forgotten, or at least neglected these fires. So have local media, politicians, middle America and the philanthropic world. No one is asking, "Who benefits when a vigorous black congregation is wounded by fire?" No one is asking, "Who might be complicit in these crimes?"

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