2 Men Indicted in Fire at Black Church

Two former Ku Klux Klansmen were indicted in Charleston on federal civil rights charges for allegedly plotting the burning of a black church. Arthur Allen Haley and Hubert “Herbert” Lavon Rowell were charged in connection with a fire last summer at Macedonia Baptist Church in Bloomville. Haley selected the church and Rowell instructed Gary C. Cox and Timothy A. Welch how to set the fire, prosecutors said. More than 70 suspicious fires have broken out at predominantly black churches in the South since 1995. A similar number of fires have been reported at white churches in the region.