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The
Highland Research and Education Center, whose main office burned
down last week, was home to innumerable documents, recorded
speeches and artifacts from the movement that were lost in the
fire, it said on its website.
It described the graffiti only as a "white power" symbol painted
on the parking lot.
"While we do not know the names of the culprits, we know that
the white power movement has been increasing and consolidating
power across the south," the center said in a statement on
Tuesday. "Now is the time to be vigilant."
Friday's fire was less than a week after another fire police say
was race-driven arson at a Southern California mosque, where
racist graffiti was left in the parking lot.
No one was injured in either fire.
The Jefferson county sheriff's office is investigating the
Highland Center fire as a possible crime, broadcaster NBC and
other media have said.
A sheriff's spokesperson was not immediately available to
comment to Reuters early on Wednesday.
Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt called the incident "abhorrent",
media said.
The Highland Center helped organize the Montgomery, Alabama bus
boycotts of 1955 that were among the first major civil rights
protests of the movement in the United States.
Protesters, mostly black residents, refused to ride city buses
in a bid to defy racial segregation, after Parks was arrested
for refusing to give up her seat to a white person.
The center also helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee, a youth movement that worked with Martin Luther King
Jr.'s efforts to ensure voting rights and social justice for
minorities, it said on its website.
(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Clarence
Fernandez)
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