As firefighters neared the 110-year-old church Tuesday night in Greenville, Miss., they saw flames in the windows and smoke pouring from the roof.

When they got closer, they could see two words spray-painted on the side of the burning sanctuary: “Vote Trump.”

Investigators suspect that the fire at the historically black Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church was set on purpose, Greenville Fire Chief Ruben Brown told The Washington Post. The incident is being investigated as a hate crime by local, state and federal law enforcement agencies.

Greenville Mayor Errick Simmons said the fire was a “hateful and cowardly act,” sparked by the incendiary rhetoric of GOP nominee Donald Trump during his presidential campaign.

“We know what the black church means to the black community and the symbolism of the black church,” Simmons told The Post. “This is the place [where] people freely assembled to pray and strategize on how to get civil liberties and rights that were denied to them.”

Simmons is the first black man to be elected mayor of Greenville — a city where 78 percent of the population is black, according to census figures.

Simmons said he directed police to provide additional patrols at the city’s churches in the wake of the fire. Officers will also be out in force on Election Day, he said.

“We want folks to go to the polls and not feel fearful, to not feel intimidated and to not feel they have to stay home because some person is engulfed in hate,” he said. “This is a direct assault on black folks. It goes to the heart of intimidating folks.”

[KKK’s official newspaper supports Donald Trump for president] 

The fire and its political message come with a week left in the campaign. Trump has struggled to make inroads with black voters and recently pledged what he called “a new deal for Black America.” His plan would give city leaders authority to declare blighted communities disaster areas. It would also use microloans, tax holidays and investment incentives to spur the economies of inner cities.

Trump has also said that Hillary Clinton and other Democrats have taken for granted the overwhelming support they receive from blacks.

But, according to The Post, Trump’s campaign is “barely registering with African American voters. He had 3 percent support among African Americans in an ABC News tracking poll released (Oct. 23), compared with Clinton’s 82 percent. Romney had 6 percent support among African Americans in 2012.”

One flash point for Trump: his campaign has been praised by hate groups that have persecuted blacks for decades. One of the most prominent newspapers for the Ku Klux Klan endorsed Trump, dedicating its entire front page to a pro-Trump article. In February, Trump was endorsed by former KKK grand wizard David Duke. He later declined to unequivocally condemn Duke when prodded by CNN’s Jake Tapper.

Trump has also made disparaging remarks about other minority groups, including Hispanics and Muslims.

On Wednesday, fire investigators in Mississippi insisted that the motives of whoever burned the church in Greenville are unclear.

Firefighters were summoned to the burning church about 9 p.m., Brown said.

They found the brick building in flames. They put out the fire in 12 minutes, the chief said, but the sanctuary sustained heavy damage. A kitchen and pastor’s study in the rear were also damaged.

No one was inside the church when it was set on fire and no one was injured, Brown said. The mayor said investigators have identified “a person of interest,” but authorities have not named a suspect or made any arrests.

Setting fire to a church is a symbolic act that stretches back to the Reconstruction-era South, when churches served as the centers of black communities.

The most infamous case came in 1963, when four KKK members bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., killing four girls who were changing into their choir robes and wounding 20 others. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. called the act “one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity.”

The bombing brought an international spotlight to the U.S. civil rights movement and “the injustices and terrorism facing blacks in the South, and was a flash point in the struggle for equal rights,” according to Smithsonian Magazine.

The South saw a new spate of church attacks in summer 2015 after a white gunman shot and killed nine black people during a prayer service at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C. The suspect, Dylann Roof, said he wanted to start a race war.

[Five predominantly black Southern churches burn within a week; arson suspected in at least three] 

Afterward, multiple black churches were burned across the South, from Charlotte to Macon, Ga.

“Everything is gone — books, robes, all my pictures, all my degrees,” the Rev. Bobby Jean Jones told the Aiken Standard after the Glover Grove Baptist Church in Warrenville, S.C., burned down. “All the history is gone.

“It’s all for the good, because God is in control and not me,” he added. “That’s why I’m calm, because I know who is in control, to tell you the truth. I’ve been knowing the Lord for a long time, and I know how he works. He will turn bad to good in a minute.”