Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church The Home of Dr. Martin Luther King has been under attack by Two White Men Caught on Camera leaving behind Confederate Flags

4 Confederate flags left at Ebenezer Baptist Church, MLK Visitor Center
BHR HollyWood Reports........Police say two white men were caught on camera leaving confederate battle flags around the historic church where Martin Luther King, Jr., was baptized and eulogized.
Rev. Raphael Warnock and Atlanta
 police chief George Turner at Conference Thurs 

Rev. Raphael Warnock, the church's senior pastor, called the act a "terroristic threat."

As investigators worked to identify the men and their motive, church and civic leaders decried the act as terrorism

"It is a hateful act,"  I view it as an effort to intimidate us in some way, and we will not be intimidated."

Around 6 a.m. Thursday, a maintenance man spotted the four flags and notified a federal park ranger who then called police. Local and federal investigators were dispatched to the Auburn Avenue sites, where the flags were removed and taken as evidence.

4 Flags Place in certain Area on The Grounds of
Ebenezer Baptist Church 
"Obviously this has gotten our attention, as it comes just a few short weeks after the massacre of nine innocent people in the Charleston church," Warnock said, "An environment in which we have witnessed several church burnings, and at a time in which we are witnessing the killing of unarmed citizens by police and the response of the Black Lives Matter movement," he observed.


The Days of the Civil Rights Movement
"It was disturbing and sickening, but unfortunately not terribly surprising," Warnock added. "We've seen this kind of ugliness before."

Warnock labeled the perpetrators "cowardly and misguided" and the act "provocative."

"This is the same as a swastika on the campus of a Jewish temple," Warnock said. "This is an act of domestic terrorism."
Martin Luther King Jr

The church is part of a national park, The King Center, making the possibility of federal hate crime or terrorism charges greater, if the DOJ determines it to be so.

Atlanta police chief George Turner said he was not yet able to label the act a hate crime, but is working with federal officials to determine "appropriate charges. Video Credit to Atlanta Channel 2 Action News "

Ebenezer Baptist Church was once led by civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., who is entombed nearby alongside his widow, Coretta Scott King.

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