A historic Black church was vandalized with racist graffiti over the weekend
The more than 200-year-old church has experienced vandalism before, but never hate speech.
Union Trinity AME Church, one of Philadelphia’s historic Black religious institutions and known as “The Friendly Church,” was vandalized with racist graffiti over the weekend.
Pastor Tianda Smart-Heath was informed of the vandalism shortly after Sunday service, where she found racist slogans invoking the name of God and enslaved people sprayed onto the exterior walls of the more than 200-year-old church, according to the Philadelphia Police Department.
The newly merged church, Union Trinity AME in North Philadelphia, hasn’t welcomed congregants inside the historic building since 2020, and it is currently under construction, according to Fox 29. In that time, church service has been held at the Beckett Life Center next door.
Smart-Heath told local media that the church has been vandalized before, including trespassing and theft, but never with racist hate speech. Police responded to the vandalism on Sunday to photograph the scene and conduct a follow-up investigation. The case is overseen by PPD Central Detectives.
African Methodist Episcopal (AME) churches are part of a vast network of independent Black Christian churches that was started in Philadelphia two centuries ago, when Richard Allen founded Mother Bethel AME in 1787.
A vandal broke three windows at Mother Bethel AME almost two years ago, including precious stained-glass windows. More than 400 donors stepped in to fund repairs.
The vandalism at Union Trinity AME closely follows a separate hate crime at Roxborough High School, where a masked vandal spray-painted racist and antisemitic epithets across the school building. Police have released a description and video of the suspect in the hate crime.
Hate crimes have more than tripled in Pennsylvania since 2020, according to the most recent “No Hate in Our State” report from the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission (PHRC). The most prevalent form of hate crime in Pennsylvania, according to FBI reports, is anti-Black or anti-African American hate crimes, accounting for more than one out of every four hate crimes committed in the state in the last five years.
“Any attack on the Black Church as one of the historical foundations of the African American community needs to be condemned and looked at through the lens of a potential hate crime,” said PHRC Executive Director Chad Dion Lassiter. “We can no longer be silent in this moment of outward hatred and rage toward any institution of faith.”