The night Barack Obama won his first presidential election, a Black church in Springfield, Mass., was burned, exposing the nation’s deep racial divisions. This episode, the third in a five-part series on the rise of white supremacy and domestic terrorism in the United States, looks at the white supremacist movement’s reaction to the election of a Black president. It explores how a focus on terrorist threats from abroad allowed a homegrown threat to fester.
This is the third episode of a five-part series produced in collaboration with The WNET Group’s reporting initiative Exploring Hate, on the roots and rise of hate in America and across the globe. Leadership support for Exploring Hate is provided by the Sylvia A. and Simon B. Poyta Programming Endowment to Fight Antisemitism. To learn more about Exploring Hate and for a full list of funders, visit pbs.org/exploringhate.