Educating those who hate

NAACP Lakeview’s Bea Bayley reflects on the tragedy in Charleston, and what may follow

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Given the news of the Charleston murders, the Confederate flag and a recent study showing twice as many people have been killed by white, non-Muslim extremists in the U.S. as by radical Muslims since Sept. 11, 2001, you have to wonder where Bea Bayley gets her strength and resolve.

Bayley, president of the NAACP’s Lakeview chapter and a trustee of St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church on Pershing Boulevard in Lakeview, spoke in reserved, respectful tones when asked about her thoughts on these issues. “We want the [Confederate] flag down because it should not be a symbol for anyone,” she said. “In regards to the Civil War, once you have a war, the flag of the victor is the one that remains flying — there’s no need for that flag to be anywhere.”

Bayley conducts most NAACP meetings at St. Paul, which is part of the same organization as the Emanuel AME in Charleston, where nine people were murdered two weeks ago. Most of the NAACP chapters on Long Island, she said, hold meetings in their local AME churches.

“We’re not going to stop worshipping the way we worship, and our doors are always going to be open,” Bayley said. “If hate comes in, that’s a whole other scenario; we’re going to safeguard ourselves.” She added that she is part of a group trying to organize an interfaith symposium that will address racially motivated shootings. It was too early in the group’s development, she said, for her to offer further details.

Bayley said she did not believe the shooting was an isolated incident, and cited examples throughout the past several decades as her proof. “There have been many shootings at churches over the history of the civil rights movement,” she said. “What we want to do as an organization is educate people, because the more educated they are, the more exposed people become to black folks in general, the less fear they will have for us.”

Despite the efforts of the NAACP and her local church, however, Bayley contends that it is difficult to find a solution to the violence. “Unfortunately, it’s not us — we don’t have the problem, so we can’t really solve the problem,” she said. “It’s the people that hate that need to change, not us.”

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