A homemade bomb detonated on Tuesday at the NAACP chapter offices in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the FBI said.
No deaths or injuries were reported. The explosion may have been intended to be bigger than it was. A gas can next to the bomb, which was set next to an exterior wall outside the NAACP headquarters, failed to ignite, according to the FBI's Denver office. The blast from the "improvised explosion device" reportedly caused "only minimal surface charring" to the building.
FBI officials are seeking a person of interest who was described as a balding white male around 40 years old, possibly driving a pick-up truck.
As ThinkProgress notes, bombings of civil rights organizations were a terrorist tactic that was often seen during the Jim Crow era:
Although the apparent bomber’s motives are not yet known, bombings were a common terrorist tactic during the Jim Crow era. The city of Birmingham, Alabama became known as “Bombingham” due to a rash of bombings targeting black homes and churches, including a 1963 church bombing that killed four girls.
Henry Allen, Jr., president of the NAACP chapter, said the organization would not call the bombing a hate crime without further information—but that it would not be deterred from its civil rights work, either.
"We believe in civil rights for all, and really we won't work in fear and we won't be deterred," Allen told the Gazette. "We'll move on. This won't deter us from doing the job we want to do in the community."
