The unspeakable happened in our city

Transcription

F O U N D E D 18 0 3
W I N N E R O F T H E 2 0 15 P U L I T Z E R P R I Z E F O R P U B L I C S E R V I C E
Friday, June 19, 2015
postandcourier.com
Charleston, S.C.
$1.00
‘The unspeakable
happened in our city’
Paul Zoeller/Staff
Phyllis Holmes of Charleston takes a moment to pray with her 3-year-old granddaughter after placing a candle at a memorial on the sidewalk in front of Emanuel AME
Church on Thursday evening in Charleston. The city tried to come to grips with tragedy Thursday, a day after a mass shooting at the church left nine people dead.
Profiles of the victims. A4-5
Obama, Haley mourn with Holy City; fugitive captured in N.C.
Brian Hicks: A black-and-white
issue — Just pure evil. A6
BY ANDREW KNAPP
[email protected]
Inside
Obama renews calls for racial
healing, gun control. A6
Confederate flag flying at full
height causes stir. A6
Church a place of prayer
steeped in history. A6
Churches to ring bells in unity.
A10
Suspect known for racist
symbols, remarks. A11
Editorial: Unite against
inhumanity. A18
Online
For complete coverage of the
shooting at Emanuel AME
Church, including victim profiles,
videos, photo galleries and
more, go to postandcourier.
com/church-shooting. Join the
conversation on social media by
using #CharlestonShooting.
To our readers
The placement of a sticky note
ad on the front page of some
home delivery newspapers
on Thursday was a deeply
regrettable coincidence.
We apologize.
N
S
After a night of fear and grief in downtown
Charleston, authorities in North Carolina arrested a young white man on charges that he
gunned down nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, ending a
vast search but leaving the city and the nation
reeling.
The Holy City struggled to comprehend why
the gunman police identified as 21-year-old
Dylann Storm Roof would sit down for an hour
at a Bible study in the historic black church on
Calhoun Street and then open fire, wiping out
most of the clergy. The U.S. Justice Department
is investigating the killings as a hate crime.
To President Barack Obama, the shooting
stirred up “a dark part” of American history
when racially motivated violence was more
prevalent. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch
declared that such acts have “no place in a civilized society.”
The emotional weight of the ordeal also
brought local activists, Charleston’s police chief
and South Carolina’s governor to tears as they
fought to find words to comfort community
members who fear further violence in a city
Please see Shootings, Page A7
Community’s
songs, tears,
prayers flow
Hate crime
may be S.C.’s
deadliest
BY Adam Parker
and MELISSA BOUGHTON
[email protected]
[email protected]
by deanna pan
[email protected]
Bursts of loud applause punctuated
Thursday’s midday prayer vigil honoring the nine victims of Charleston’s
first modern mass shooting. Heartfelt
praise and loud singing characterized
the evening vigil at Royal Missionary
Baptist Church. And at Second PresGrace Beahm/staff
byterian Church, worshippers filled
the pews for a somber prayer service Charleston Mayor Joe Riley, Gov. Nikki Haley and U.S.
Sen. Tim Scott attend a prayer vigil held at Morris
Please see Vigil, Page A8
Brown AME Church on Thursday.
Chance of storms.
High 97. Low 77.
Complete 5-day
forecast, B10
Bridge...................B9
Business................B1
Classifieds.............D1
Comics................B8-9
Crosswords.......B8,D9
Editorials.............A18
Horoscope.............B9
Local.....................A2
Movies..................B7
Obituaries.............B4
Sports................... C1
Television..............B6
The mass shooting at a historic
Charleston black church Wednesday
night may mark the deadliest hate
crime in South Carolina history, according to a prominent local historian.
A lone gunman shot and killed nine
worshippers at a prayer meeting inside
Emanuel AME Church, the first and
oldest African Methodist Episcopal
congregation in the South. A Facebook photo of the suspect arrested for
Please see hate, Page A9
Charleston Harbor
Resort: Half off at Charleston
Harbor Bridge Bar, Marina Store
or Fish House. See A2
CHURCH SHOOTINGS
?4: Friday, June 19, 2015
The Post and Courier
CHURCH SHOOTINGS
Friday, June 19, 2015: ?5
Clementa Pinckney
Sharonda
ColemanSingleton
M
other, teacher, coach,
minister — Sharonda
Coleman-Singleton did
all of it, and with a smile and a
style those who knew her will
not soon forget.
“She always had a smile on her
face ... an awesome smile,” said
one colleague at Goose Creek
High School.
“When she came to games, you
knew she was there,” said Goose
Creek Principal Jimmy Huskey.
“She was going to be yelling and
screaming for the Gators, and
she loved Goose Creek High
School.”
Coleman-Singleton, 45,
was one of nine people killed
Wednesday night in the
Church in Charleston. She was a
minister on staff at the historic
church, a role she fulfilled on
top of her duties as a speech
pathologist and girls track and
field coach at Goose Creek High.
But the most important role
she played was as the mother
of three children, including her
oldest, Charleston Southern
sophomore baseball player Chris
Singleton.
“She loved baseball and loved
Chris,” Goose Creek baseball
coach Chris Pond said. “She
loved everyone and always
had a positive attitude about
everything.”
Coleman-Singleton ran track
herself, at South Carolina State
University, where she helped
her team to a conference
championship and earned a
degree in speech pathology and
audiology in 1991. A member of
the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority,
she also earned a master’s degree
from Montclair State in her
native New Jersey.
She worked in school districts
in Georgia before joining
the Berkeley County School
District in 2007, working first
at Stratford and for the last
eight years at Goose Creek.
She earned a reputation at the
latter as a fierce advocate for her
students.
“She was a bulldog when it
came to her kids,” an emotional
Huskey said Thursday. “She
cared about her kids. She was a
true team player, but she always
wanted more for her kids, and I
admired her for that.”
As the Gators’ track coach,
Coleman-Singleton attended
to more than her athletes’
technique and times.
“It’s 95 degrees out there, and
she’s with those girls every day,”
Huskey said. “She taught those
young ladies how to be better
young ladies, and that can never
be replaced.”
Coleman-Singleton’s older son,
Chris, was a two-sport star at
Goose Creek, playing baseball
and basketball. She called him
“Lil Chris” and sat proudly by
his side on the day he signed a
letter of intent to play baseball at
Charleston Southern.
On Chris’ senior night during
basketball season, ColemanSingleton carried a single yellow
rose in her left hand, her right
arm through her son’s. She was
smiling.
“She was a wonderful parent,
very involved,” said former
Goose Creek athletic director
Chuck Reedy. “She was one
of those people a lot of people
looked up to and tried to
emulate.”
Her son Chris posted this
Thursday on Instagram:
“You were a better mother than
I could have ever asked for. This
has truly broken my heart in
every way possible.”
Cynthia Hurd
Ethel Lance
C
E
ynthia Hurd worked
her way up Charleston
County’s library system
to become manager of one of its
busiest branches, but those who
knew her best say she was much
more.
One of the nine victims of
Wednesday’s church shooting,
Hurd spent her life helping
people, particularly helping them
become educated, said Jamie
Thomas, the library system’s
spokeswoman and Hurd’s friend.
In a 2003 interview, Hurd
said, “I like helping people find
answers,” adding that the best
thing about being a librarian was
service. “Your whole reason for
being there is to help people.”
One of those Hurd helped was
Kim Odom, who took over as
manager of the John Dart branch
when Hurd was promoted.
“She really opened up to me
what library service meant,”
Odom said. “(It’s) not just a
building where you come for
storytime but a place where you
really can get help ... whether it is
helping someone with a resume
or helping them use a computer a
little bit better.”
A Charleston native whose first
job was scooping ice cream at
Swensen’s shop, Hurd also served
on the Charleston Housing
Authority’s board since 1995. She
was very willing to pose tough
questions, but also was someone
who loved to laugh, director Don
Cameron said.
“She also was a person of very
strong conviction and strong
will,” he said. “You always knew
where she stood. She was not the
kind of person where you had to
figure it out.”
Cameron traveled with Hurd
to Washington and London and
said she could talk to the most
influential, well-respected figures
as easily as to someone she just
met on the street. “She was a very,
very good woman,” he said. “She
gave of her time freely.”
Since 2009, she also served as
president of Septima P. Clark
Corp., a nonprofit that gives
small grants to resident programs
for those in public housing.
Hurd also was the sister of
former North Carolina state Sen.
Malcolm Graham, who released
a statement calling his sister “a
woman of faith. This is a very
difficult time for our family, and
Cynthia will be sorely missed.”
Hurd worked with the county’s
libraries for 31 years, serving as
branch manager of the John L.
Dart Branch from 1990 to 2011
before becoming manager of the
St. Andrews Regional Library,
which county officials said
Thursday would be named in her
honor.
To honor Hurd and the other
victims, the library — whose
main branch is just down
Calhoun Street from the church
— closed all 16 locations today.
The St. Andrews and John L.
Dart branches will remain closed
Friday. She is survived by her
husband, Arthur.
——Robert Behre
thel Lance loved to dress
up and take her family to
see performances at the
Gaillard Municipal Auditorium
when she wasn’t on duty there as
a custodian.
She started working at the venue in 1968 when it first opened,
and she stayed until retirement in
2002, according to Cam Patterson, director of special facilities
for the city of Charleston, who
worked with Lance at the Gaillard for many years.
Patterson said Lance was not
only a co-worker, but a friend.
“She was funny and a pleasure
to be around. And she was a
wonderful mother and grandmother,” Patterson said. “She
would have her children and
grandchildren come to the Gaillard from time to time. She was
like me, a no-nonsense grandmother and I know they are going to miss her terribly.”
Lance was one of nine victims
of the shooting at Emanuel AME
Church on Wednesday night.
Family members said she also
was a custodian at the church for
roughly 30 years, but on Wednesday she was there as a faithful
member of the congregation.
Lance, 70, grew up in Charleston and raised five children in
West Ashley.
She is survived by a son, Gary
L. Washington, and three daughters, Sharon W. Risher, Nadine L.
Collier and Esther Lance.
“A strong woman,” was the
first phrase that came to Esther
Lance’s mind to describe her
mother.
Her voice cracked as she fought
back tears, explaining that this
isn’t the first time her family has
dealt with loss.
Lance’s husband and the father
of her children, Nathaniel Lance,
died in 1988. In October 2013,
her daughter Terrie Washington
died of cancer at age 53.
And Ethel Lance was the matriarch, the “strong woman who just
tried to keep her family together,”
Esther Lance said.
She was dedicated to Emanuel
AME Church, where she was a
lifelong member, Esther Lance
said. As its custodian, she took
pride in looking after the historic
church.
“If she saw a scuff on the floor
she’d say, ‘Oh no, don’t y’all mess
up my floor’,” Esther Lance said,
adding that’s just the way her
mother was.
“If she saw something wrong,
she’ll tell you,” Esther Lance said.
“When you right, you’re right.
But if you’re wrong, she will let
you know. She’s not going to
sugar-coat anything.”
But her mother was happy, full
of joy, she added. She always
found time to spoil her seven
grandchildren and four greatgrandchildren, by buying them
gifts and taking them to the
movies.
“Just Monday, we were in my
yard, laughing and joking,” Esther said.
The family is receiving friends
at 109 Peppertree Lane in North
Charleston. Funeral arrangements have not yet been announced.
——Abigail Darlington
Depayne
MiddletonDoctor
J
ackie Starkes holds to a
treasured memory of her
friend of 15 years, the Rev.
Depayne Middleton-Doctor.
On Easter Sunday three years
ago, Starkes went through an
emotionally painful time and
was so distraught she could not
sing with the church choir that
day.
She remembers gazing up at
Middleton-Doctor in the pulpit.
“Our eyes connected, and
she could see what I was going
through,” Starkes said.
After the service, the two
held each other. No words were
necessary, Starkes said, “She can
see through your pain.”
She just wishes she could have
done something Wednesday
night while she helplessly
watched the news play out on
television.
As the death toll became
clear from the apparent
racially motivated killings at
Charleston’s Emanuel AME
Church, Starkes clung to hope
she would not hear her friend’s
name.
But that was not to be.
Middleton-Doctor died along
with eight others who had gone
to the church for an evening
Bible study.
They were joined there for
almost an hour by Dylann
Storm Roof, a 21-year-old white
man from near Columbia, who
then cut them all down in a
spray of gunfire, police said.
Starkes can’t make sense of the
unthinkable. But she described
her friend as living a life
dedicated to her Christian faith,
“loving God, loving singing and
loving her girls.” She is survived
by four daughters.
Starkes met her about 15
years ago at Mount Moriah
Missionary Baptist Church in
North Charleston where they
just started talking and hit it
off. “We were kindred spirits.
We were both mothers with
daughters and we fell in love.”
The two also loved to sing in
church choirs, and MiddletonDoctor, a minister, has preached
in both Baptist and AME
churches in the Charleston area.
Starkes said it wasn’t until
March of this year that her
friend joined Emanuel AME
Church.
Middleton-Doctor, 49, retired
in 2005 as Charleston County
director of the Community
Development Block Grant
Program.
Last year, she began working
for Southern Wesleyan
University as admissions
coordinator for the school’s
Charleston learning center.
SWU President Todd Voss
described her as “always a warm
and enthusiastic leader,” who
believed in the school’s mission
to help students achieve their
potential by connecting faith
with learning.”
“Our prayers go out to family
and friends. This is a great
loss for our students and the
Charleston region.”
Starkes said she will always
remember the sound of
Middleton-Doctor’s voice:
“So angelic it could move the
very depth of your heart... How
do you describe an angel?”
——Doug Pardue
——Jeff Hartsell
To share your memories of the victims and condolences with their families, please go to
legacy.com/news/in-the-news/remembering-charleston-church-shooting-victims/3303
Myra
Thompson
Ty Sanders
M
yra Thompson, 59, was
one of the people killed in
Wednesday’s shootings.
Atlanta TV station WXIA reports
Thompson has a daughter who is a
part of the Big Bethel AME Church
in Atlanta.
The church’s pastor, Rev. John
Foster, said “We’re just in prayer
and just in shock to everyone as
they were adjusting to the news
this morning,” according to
WXIA.
Another religious organization shared their condolences for
Thompson’s family.
Mashable reported Archbishop
Foley Beach stated on Facebook,
“Please join me in praying for the
Rev. Anthony Thompson, Vicar of
Holy Trinity REC (ACNA Church
in Charleston, his family, and their
congregation, with the killing of
his wife, Myra, in the Charleston
shootings last night.”
The Holy Trinity Church is on
Bull St. in downtown Charleston.
T
y Sanders’ smile gave it
away, that’s why Hortense
Mitchell stopped on the
street to ask the tall stranger to be
in her play, she said. He had that
quality about him that engaged
people. And even though he had
no acting experience, he agreed
on the spot to audition.
Tywanza Sanders, 26, was
working as a barber in North
Charleston after graduating in
2014 from Allen University with a
business administration degree. A
press release issued by the school
described him as quiet with a
warm and helpful spirit.
He was all of that and more.
He was the sort of observant
person who made people feel at
ease, said Nowa Fludd of North
Charleston, who would have
performed with him in the play.
He politely held open doors.
Between rehearsals, he would sit
clicking away on his smartphone,
but if you started cutting up, you’d
turn and he’d be watching with
that smile.
He competed in poetry slams,
and teased fellow cast members
in the Royal Missionary Baptist
Church play by replying to things
they said in rhymes.
“He had that dry sense of humor
that you almost had to think
about it, and then you started
laughing,” Fludd said. She would
tell him “You’re so awesome” so
much, she said, that he would
deflect it by telling her first, “I
know, I’m so awesome.”
He was rehearsing not only in
the role of a timid husband but
also in a second role and as an
understudy. On stage, playing
timid to Fludd’s aggressive wife,
“he would do these little voices
that made everybody say, ‘No, no.
Don’t do that voice!’ ” she said.
Female cast members would
tease him about not dating anyone
regularly and he astounded
Fludd by saying he didn’t want
to get involved until he had some
security in life to offer. “Why
would I want to be someone
who would become a liability for
them,” she recalls him saying.
The cast is devastated, Mitchell
said. “I just don’t know what we’re
going to do right now.”
The title of the play? “Life.”
——Bo Petersen
Daniel L.
Simmons
T
he Rev. Daniel L.
Simmons, 74, was a
member of Emanuel
AME Church’s ministerial
staff who regularly attended
Wednesday night Bible study
classes.
As with two other victims,
Simmons attended Allen
University in Columbia. He
was a former pastor at Freedom
AME Church in Mount
Pleasant. Simmons was the
only victim who did not die at
the church. After he was shot,
he was taken to the Medical
University of South Carolina,
where he died in surgery,
according to coroner’s officials.
“We love him and we miss
him,” his granddaughter, Ava
Simmons, told reporters. A
relative at Simmons’ home in the
Evanston Estates area of North
Charleston said the family was
grieving and would talk about
his loss at a later date.
——Tony Bartelme
——Allison Prang
Susie
Jackson
S
by the AME Church, Pinckney
pastored during his freshman
year. He was also a page at the
Statehouse while a college student.
Pinckney started his own
political career in 1996 when he
was elected to the S.C. House of
Representatives at the age of 23.
In 2010, Pinckney told The Post
and Courier he found life as a
minister easy.
“Loving God is never separate
from loving our brothers and
sisters,” Pinckney said. “It’s always
the same.”
A black cloth was draped over
his seat in the state Senate on
Thursday.
usie Jackson was the
matriarch of the family and
among the matriarchs of
her beloved church.
Jackson, 87, attended “Mother”
Emanuel AME Church regularly,
showing up for Sunday worship
services, of course, but also for
Bible studies on Wednesday
nights.
She was a trustee of the church
and once a member of the choir.
This week, she was particularly
eager to go because a family trip
would soon take her out of town,
relatives said.
“She was a loving person,
she never had no animosity
toward nobody,” said her son
Walter Jackson, who rushed to
Charleston from Cleveland after
he heard the terrible news of
Wednesday’s mass shooting.
At Susie Jackson’s home
on Alexander Street, Walter
Jackson joined dozens of nieces,
nephews, cousins, siblings and
friends on Thursday.
They discussed the shooting
and remembered their Susie’s
spunk. Though in her upper
80s, she remained active, the
family said. She had returned
two weeks earlier from a cousin’s
graduation. And in mid-July,
she was to attend a large family
reunion.
Planning for it occupied some
of her time in recent days.
Her sister Eva Dilligard said
that the reunion was canceled
because of Jackson’s death.
“She was one of the Golden
Girls,” her sister Martha
Drayton said.
Jackson raised her son Walter
in the low-income housing
projects on the East Side. When
he moved away, she gave his
room to two young people in
the neighborhood who needed
shelter.
“She took in others,” Walter
Jackson said. “She was just that
type of person.”
Susie Jackson was one of
about a dozen people trapped at
Emanuel AME Church when the
gunman opened fire.
Her nephew Tywanza Sanders,
26, tried to protect her, family
members said. But both were
killed. Jackson’s cousin Ethel
Lance, a sexton of the church,
also was killed.
The Jackson family lost three
people in a single, terrible flash
of violence.
——Schuyler Kropf
——Adam Parker
File/Grace Beahm/Staff
Sen. Clementa Pinckney on the Senate floor in 2014. The 41-year-old minister was killed by a gunman along with eight of his parishioners
Wednesday night in his Charleston church while he was leading a Bible study class.
F
ew traveled the state’s
roads as much as the Rev.
Clementa Pinckney.
As a Statehouse lawmaker, he
represented a rural spread of six
impoverished counties south of
Charleston covering an area about
the size of Rhode Island.
As a pastor, he ministered to the
sick and to shut-ins.
Driving home from his
Statehouse duties in Columbia
mid-week to attend Bible study
wasn’t unheard of.
And that’s what he was doing
at 9 p.m. Wednesday when a
white gunman killed him and
eight of his parishioners inside
Charleston’s Emanuel AME
Church.
He was 41 and leaves behind a
wife and two daughters.
Friends and colleagues
remembered Pinckney as someone
who was destined to be a rising
star in the pulpit where he was
called to preach at age 13.
Others compared his
appointment as the pastor of
Mother Emanuel, as members
describe it, to making it to
the Super Bowl itself, given
the church’s historic status in
Charleston.
The Calhoun Street congregation
was founded in 1818 as the first
African Methodist Episcopal
church in the South.
One of its founders was Denmark
Vesey, a slave who in 1822
organized a revolt that was quelled
before it began.
“We always teased him about
how he was always more interested
in being a bishop than being in
the Legislature,” said former
lawmaker and minister McKinley
Washington, who held the Senate
District 45 seat for years before
Pinckney took over in 2000.
The combination of preacher
and politician has long been
an integral part of black and
Democratic politics in the poor
South, and Pinckney’s Senate
Rainier Ehrhardt/AP
Sen. Vincent Sheheen, D-Camden, gets emotional as he sits next to the draped desk of state Sen. Clementa Pinckney on Thursday at the Statehouse in Columbia. Sheheen posted a photo and message on Twitter on Thursday morning, “A memorial on my seat mate’s State Senate desk, Clementa Pinckney. RIP my
friend. #EmmanuelAME.”
District 45 seat is ripe for that sort
of figure.
The seat covers parts of
Allendale, Beaufort, Charleston,
Colleton, Hampton and Jasper
counties, encompassing some of
the most neglected parts of the
state.
“The pulpit gave him an
opportunity to provide leadership
for his community and baptize
believers to Christ,” said state Sen.
Marlon Kimpson of Charleston.
Pinckney was born in Jasper
County, and the church ran deep
in his family.
On his mother’s side are four
generations of AME pastors.
His great-grandfather, the Rev.
Lorenzo Stevenson, sued the
Democratic Party in the state to
end whites-only primaries.
His uncle, the Rev. Levern
Stevenson, pastor at Macedonia
AME Church in Charleston, was
involved with the NAACP in
the 1960s and 1970s, fighting to
desegregate school buses in Jasper
County.
He sued Gov. John C. West to
create single-member voting
districts that would open the door
to blacks who wanted to serve in
the Legislature.
Pinckney joined the AME
Conference at 14 under a
missionary rule and soon was
appointed by the AME bishop to
an apprenticeship.
At Allen University, which is run
A6: Friday, June 19, 2015
Church shootings
Obama renews calls for racial healing, gun control
BY ROBERT BEHRE
[email protected]
For President Barack Obama,
the mass shooting at a Charleston church was personal.
Obama addressed the nation
from the White House shortly
after noon Thursday as a prayer
vigil for the nine victims was
underway, and said both he and
his wife Michelle knew the Rev.
Clementa Pinckney and other
members of the church where
Wednesday night’s massacre
occurred.
“To say our thoughts and
prayers are with them and
their families and community
doesn’t say enough to convey
the heartache the sadness and
the anger that we feel,” he said.
While Obama has visited
South Carolina only once since
it gave him his big victory in the
2008 Democratic presidential primary, he has met with
Pinckney, a soft-spoken state
senator and one of the state’s
highest ranking Democrats.
Obama also explained the
historic significance of Mother Emanuel, the 19th century
black church where the shooting happened, comparing the
incident to the 1963 murder of
four black school girls in Birmingham, Ala., and calling for
national introspection on gun
control.
Obama said he would let law
enforcement do its work to ensure justice is served and noted
that Attorney General Loretta
Lynch has opened a hate crime
investigation.
Obama said he is limited in
saying some things as investigators do their work, “but I don’t
need to be constrained about
the emotions that tragedies
like this raise. I’ve had to make
statements like this too many
times.”
He said the setting of the mass
shooting, inside a black church,
raises questions about a dark
part of American history.
“We know hatred across races
and faiths poses a particular
threat to our democracy and
ideals,” he said. “I’m confident
that the outpouring of faith and
fellowship from all races and
faiths and places of worship
indicates the degree in which
those old vestiges of hatred can
be overcome.”
Obama said innocent people
were killed because someone
who wanted to harm them “had
no trouble getting their hands
on a gun.”
W hile he ack nowledged
new gun control legislation
was unlikely in Washington
these days — a major legislative push following the Sandy Hook school massacre in
Connecticut came up short
— he noted other civilized
countries don’t see the same
level of gun violence.
“It would be wrong for us not
to acknowledge it, and at some
point, it’s going to become important for the American people to come to grips with and
to shift how we think about
the issue of gun violence, col-
Susan Walsh/ap
President Barack Obama, accompanied by Vice President Joe Biden, pauses while speaking in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington on Thursday.
lectively.”
“Any death of this sort is a
Obama said it is within the tragedy, any shooting involving
power of the American people multiple victims is a tragedy,”
to address it.
he said. “There is something
particularly heartbreaking
about a death happening in
a place where we seek solace,
where we seek peace.”
A black-and-white
issue: Just pure evil
O
Leroy Burnell/Staff
People gather in front of Emanuel AME Church on Calhoun Street, where a gunman shot nine people Wednesday night.
Emanuel AME, symbol of
faith, liberty, has endured
Church at heart of tragedy a place of prayer steeped in history
by jennifer berry hawes churches were the only place in
[email protected]
antebellum times where black
people could assume leaderBeyond the squad cars block- ship,” Alston said.
ing roads and news trucks
One of its founding members
jamming sidewalks Thursday, was Denmark Vesey.
Emanuel AME Church sat in
Almost to the day 193 years
the heart of historic Charles- ago, Vesey plotted a slave rebelton, a sentry of faith roped off lion from the very church where
by police tape to all who were so much blood spilled Wedneswatching her.
day when a band of worshippers
A day earlier, as it has been for gathered in the basement to
two centuries, it was a hub of study God’s word.
friends gathering in prayer and
Vesey’s rebellion might have
community.
charted a new course for the
Now it stood alone, cordoned lives of enslaved black resioff from the bustle, silent in the dents, had someone not tipped
day’s stifling heat after a mass off authorities. But someone
shooting of its faithful the night did. And the 1822 plot was
before.
discovered, bringing harsh
“It is heart-rending,” said Liz reprisals to the area’s black
Alston, Emanuel’s church his- residents.
torian and an active member.
Vesey, a former slave but then
The historic Charleston con- a free carpenter, died with 34
gregation was born in 1816, the others by the hangman’s noose.
first African Methodist EpisThe ensuing investigation
copal Church in the South. It forced the church’s pastor,
remains the oldest south of the the Rev. Morris Brown, to flee
Mason-Dixon Line.
north to Philadelphia, seat
L i ke ma ny ot her black of the AME Church. Mother
churches, it became a defender Emanuel was burned.
of freedom to worship — and
Yet church members rebuilt
much, much more.
— at least until 1834, when
“Emanuel has always been black churches were outlawed
a focal point of social activ- out of fear of black residents
ity, religious activity, because organizing, said Peter Beck,
a local church historian and
professor of Christian studies
at Charleston Southern University.
Emanuel AME members
were driven underground to
worship in secret for decades
until the Civil War freed them
all.
“We do believe in a formalized structure, so we went underground,” Alston said. “But
we couldn’t sing and pray like
we usually do.”
Then it rebuilt again.
In 1865, at the close of the Civil War, the congregation also
adopted the name Emanuel. It
means “God is with us.”
“When nobody was there,
they had their community,”
Beck said.
And they still do, amid so
much horror and grief.
Yet enough has changed in
the ensuing 150 years that the
nation elected its first black
president. Now he, too, is left
to mourn.
President Barack Obama
and first lady Michelle Obama
knew the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, the church’s pastor who
was among the dead.
“Mother Emanuel Church
and its congregation have ris-
f course this is about
race.
The murder of nine
people at Emanuel AME
Church was not terrorism or
some sort of perverted assault
on religious freedom.
It was hate.
None of the people in that
Bible study class at Mother
Emanuel had ever done anything to their murderer. They
were not responsible for what
was in his heart, for his lot in
life.
How could he sit in that
church and listen to people
innocently discuss Scripture,
then kill them in cold blood
— and think he is the good
guy?
It was evil. It was hate.
It was racism.
Of course, some people want
to say this was just the work of
an unstable person, someone
who was mentally ill.
If he is ill, and he probably
is, you can bet part of what
set him off was hearing hate
speech disguised as political discourse for years. It has
escalated dramatically since
a black man won the White
House. That cannot be denied
by any reasonable person.
Every day you can hear these
people on talk radio whining about taking back their
country.
Take it back from whom exactly? This country belonged
to the people sitting in that
church as much as anyone
long before the murderous
punk who did this was born
and spoon-fed bigoted beliefs.
He wasn’t old enough to develop such hardened opinions
on his own — he picked them
up in his environment. It was
learned behavior.
It is racism, pure and simple.
And trying to dismiss that,
or make excuses for it, does
nothing but exacerbate the
problem.
BRIAN HICKS
color of their skin. But it still
happens.
Let’s be clear: It is wrong
to assume that just because
someone flies a Confederate
flag, they are racist, but it is
just as wrong to assume that
anyone wearing a hoodie is a
criminal.
But if you have a CSA tag
on your car, walk into a black
church and kill nine people,
yes, that might qualify as racist in most people’s opinion.
Now no one is going so far
as to defend suspect Dylann
Roof — not even the trolls on
the Internet comment pages.
But they want to make excuses
because Roof is the archetype
of the dangerous right-wing
white boy that many of these
folks claim does not exist.
So they say it is a conspiracy
by the mainstream media and
deny, deny, deny that they
harbor any prejudice in their
hearts.
Making excuses for this
crime puts the lie to those ardent denials.
Change is slow
People who lived through
the civil rights era knew it
en before — from flames, from
would take time for old attian earthquake, from other
tudes to fade.
dark times — to give hope to
They figured it would take
generations of Charlestonians,”
generations and, to an extent,
Obama said in a televised adthey have been proven right.
dressed on Thursday.
No one is born racist, and
Pinckney took the helm of
just as many white people as
Mother Emanuel in 2010.
African-Americans are apThat year, he told a Post and
palled by this tragedy. Most
Courier reporter, “Loving God
kids today are wonderfully
is never separate from loving
color-blind, at least those who
our brothers and sisters. It’s aldon’t have parents force-feedways the same.”
ing them backward attitudes
So the church will rebuild
left over from the days of Jim
again, for one another, this In denial
Crow.
time with the question of how
The impulse to deny is
Ultimately, racism comes
to resanctify a holy place that strong.
from the need to have some
has witnessed such horror.
When photos of the suspect sense — however false — of
To this question, the Rev. Joe were first released, people on
superiority over someone else.
Darby paused Thursday. He social media actually specuClearly, the killer here is not
was the longtime senior pastor lated that he was a black guy, a superior to anyone.
of Emanuel AME’s daughter Muslim. Yeah, a black Muslim
The people who died at
church, Morris Brown AME, with a Dutchboy haircut, an
Emanuel AME were parents,
born when the mother church apartheid-era South Africa
grandparents, teachers, coachgot too large. Now Darby is flag on his shirt and a Confed- es, librarians, public servants,
presiding elder of the church’s erate States of America license pastors — hard-working
Beaufort District. But he and plate on his car.
middle-class Americans.
others remain committed to
Just like those 9/11 terrorists.
If any peckerwood thought
rebuilding Emanuel.
Is that stereotyping? You
he was better than those fine
“We’re going to have to do bet, just like assuming shoot- people, well, perhaps he was
that,” Darby said. “The family ing victim Trayvon Martin
mentally ill.
cries, and the family moves on.” was a thug because he wore a
But that doesn’t mean this
hoodie.
wasn’t about race.
Reach Jennifer Hawes at
The hypocrisy of such
937-5563 or follow her on
speculation is almost as bad as
Reach Brian Hicks at
Twitter at @JenBerryHawes.
hating someone because of the [email protected].
Statehouse Confederate flag flying at full height causes stir on Internet
By Schuyler Kropf
[email protected]
The Confederate flag flying
at the Statehouse in Columbia
became part of the Charleston
church shooting story Thursday after the U.S. and South
Carolina flags were lowered in
mourning but the rebel banner
was left flying at its full height.
State Sen. Clementa Pinckney,
a black Democratic lawmaker
and minister, was among the
nine people killed by a lone
gunman accused of committing a hate crime. The suspect,
Dylann Roof, 21, also displayed
Confederate sympathies in some
social media photographs.
Internet chatter lit up about
the debate Thursday.
“When you fly the Confederate flag in your state capital you
are sanctioning this terrorism.
Just FYI,” Roxane Gay said on
Twitter.
The “ubiquity of the Confederate flag in the South should be
a source of shame/outrage. Not
here for any lame-... ‘history’ arguments,” said LadyHawkins,
also on Twitter.
Officials said the reason why
the flag has not been touched
is that its status is outlined, by
law, as being under the protected purview of the full S.C.
Legislature, which controls if
and when it comes down.
State law reads, in part, the
state “shall ensure that the
flags authorized above shall be
placed at all times as directed
in this section and shall replace
the flags at appropriate intervals as may be necessary due
to wear.”
The protection was added by
supporters of the flag to keep it
on display as an officially recognized memorial to South Carolinians who fought in the Civil
War. Opponents say it defends
a system that supported slavery
and represents hate groups.
In a show of respect, a brief
recognition ceremony was held
in the Senate chamber Thursday. The U.S. and South Carolina flags were lowered from
the dome. The square Confederate banner that’s in front of
the building on display at the
Confederate monument was
left alone.
Church shootings
Friday, June 19, 2015: A7
‘The unspeakable happened in our city’
Shootings, from A1
with a long and complicated
history involving race.
“We woke up today, and the
heart and soul of South Carolina was broken,” Gov. Nikki
Haley said, her voice trembling.
“We have some grieving to do.
... Parents are having to explain
to their kids how they can go
to church and feel safe. That’s
not something we ever thought
we’d deal with.”
After a massive manhunt,
Roof, who has shown interest in
racial segregation and the Confederacy, was caught during a
traffic stop Thursday morning
in Shelby, N.C., 250 miles north
of Charleston. A motorist there
recognized Roof’s 15-year-old
Hyundai from wanted posters
distributed by police.
A resident of Eastover, a rural town near Columbia, Roof
smiled at television cameras
Thursday afternoon as Shelby
officers led him to a waiting cruiser, his mop of blond
hair hanging in his eyes and
a ballistic vest covering his
torso. He waived extradition,
and South Carolina flew him
back to Charleston County to
face charges in what has been
called one of worst hate crimes
the United States has seen in
decades.
Meanwhile, the community mourned and searched
for answers,
w it h hu ndreds packing
prayer vigils
in a show of
solidarity
and support
for the fallen
and the families they left
behind.
Roof
In a l l, si x
women and three men died
after gunfire sprayed through
Emanuel’s basement. Among
the dead were a state senator
who served as the church’s
primary pastor, a beloved
county librarian, a dedicated
girls track and field coach and
a young college graduate. The
victims ranged in age from 26
to 87.
Their deaths marked the
second fatal shooting in the
past three months that has
drawn the nation’s eyes to the
Charleston area, roiling racial
tensions and prompting federal investigations. The FBI has
been examining potential civil
rights violations in the April 4
killing of Walter Scott, a black
man shot in the back by a white
North Charleston police officer. FBI agents also are looking
into what motivated Wednesday’s bloody attack in Emanuel
AME Church, Columbia-based
spokeswoman Denise Taiste
confirmed.
The tragedy also renewed
politicians’ focus on reform of
the nation’s gun laws. Obama
said Thursday during a press
briefing in Washington that
the Charleston shooting should
spark national introspection
about the availability of guns.
“I’ve had to make statements
like this too many times,”
Obama said. “Communities
like this have had to endure
tragedies like this too many
times. Once again, innocent
people were killed because
someone who wanted to inflict
harm had no trouble getting
their hands on a gun.”
The shooting
Matthew Fortner/Staff
Laquanda Moultrie, holding a stuffed bear she hopes to leave at Emanuel AME Church,
stands with Surreace Cox near the police barrier.
she could tell the story of what
happened. Two other survivors,
including a young girl, played
dead, church members said.
The search
telephone tip line for people
to call if they saw the car or
its driver.
Tips started rolling in soon
after the bulletin went out. By
mid-morning, investigators
named Roof as the suspected
gunman and a call went out
for his arrest. Shortly after 11
a.m., authorities announced
he had been nabbed in North
Carolina.
“We had a number of tips
that were coming in,” Mullen,
the police chief, later said. “It
was amazing. Whenever we
got a lead ... we sent out teams.
It was a tremendous effort. ... I
am so pleased that we were able
to resolve this case quickly ... so
that nobody else is harmed by
this individual.”
A picture soon emerged of
a troubled young high school
dropout who had talked about
blacks in racially inflammatory
terms and had been arrested in
recent months on drug and
trespassing charges.
He had been banned from
a Columbia mall in February
after employees of two stores
alerted police that Roof, dressed
in all-black clothing, was asking odd questions about their
operations and when workers
left for the night, an incident
report stated. He was arrested
on a trespassing charge in April
after returning to the mall, records show.
Friends said somet hing
seemed to be bothering him,
but he stayed out of trouble until
he walked into Emanuel AME
Church on Wednesday night.
The victims
The nine people fatally shot
at Emanuel African Methodist
Episcopal Church:
zz Clementa Pinckney, 41,
the primary pastor who also
served as a state senator.
zz Cynthia Hurd, 54, St.
Andrews regional branch
manager for the Charleston
County Public Library system.
zz Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45, a church pastor,
speech therapist and coach
of the girls track and field
team at Goose Creek High
School.
zz Tywanza Sanders, 26, who
had a degree in business
administration from Allen
University, where Pinckney
also attended.
zz Ethel Lance, 70, a retired
Gailliard Center employee
who has worked recently as a
church janitor.
zz Susie Jackson, 87, Lance’s
cousin who was a longtime
church member.
zz DePayne Middleton-Doctor, 49, a retired director of
the local Community Development Block Grant Program
who joined the church in
March as a pastor.
zz Myra Thompson, 59, a pastor at the church.
zz Daniel Simmons Sr., 74, a
pastor, who died in a hospital
operating room.
The aftermath
Wade Spees/Staff
A note at the memorial in front of Emanuel AME Church,
site of Wednesday’s mass shooting, urges support for the
victims, their families, the survivors and the suspect’s
family.
Suspect arrested in church shooting
1 Dylann Storm Roof, 21, of Eastover, was arrested in 2 Shelby, N.C.,
after being suspected of fatally shooting nine people on Wednesday at
3 Emanuel AME Church on Calhoun Street in downtown Charleston.
2
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The gunman slipped out of
the church as dozens of police officers descended on the
area armed with military-style
rifles, teams of police dogs and
helicopters that circled overhead.
Area residents locked the
doors and bolted their gates,
fearful after news spread that
a gunman was on the loose.
Activists from local black communities expressed fear of being targeted next.
James Johnson, South Carolina president of the National
Action Network, stood in the
middle of Calhoun Street,
where city leaders had announced the death toll moments earlier Thursday morning, and cried.
Johnson has spoken out for
years about civil rights concerns in Charleston-area policing. He recently had joined
the Rev. Clementa Pinckney,
the slain AME church pastor,
for a summit about the Scott
shooting in North Charleston.
But Johnson had never coped
with anything like this, he
said, and he worried that it
would discourage people from
talking about racially charged
problems.
“We feel that we’re not safe,”
he said. “They could do the
same thing when we speak out
against this injustice. We must
be mindful.”
As Johnson and others grappled with such thoughts, the
gunman, who had slipped out
of Charleston, put distance between himself and the carnage
he’d left behind.
etin
Me
The tragedy unfolded on a
hot, steamy night after about a
dozen clergy and church members gathered for a regular Bible
study and prayer service. They
met in the basement, a groundlevel floor beneath the sanctuary that housed the pastor’s office and other rooms.
They studied Mark 4 16:20.
“Others, like seed sown on rocky
places, hear the word and at
once receive it with joy ...”
A young white man, not part
of the congregation, came in
around 8:15 p.m. and sat down
quietly. He stayed for 40 to 50
minutes as the session continued.
“But since they have no root,
they last only a short time.
When trouble or persecution
comes because of the word, they
quickly fall away ...”
Suddenly, the young man
rose, uttered remarks that betrayed his contempt for blacks
and opened fire with a gun.
A female trustee, who hid
under a table, was among the
survivors. The gunman told
her he would let her live so that
Leroy Burnell/Staff
Alfrieda Deas-Potts (from left), Wendell Brown, Victoria Gist and the Rev. Alonza Washington pray Thursday at the corner of Calhoun and Elizabeth
streets, a block from Emanuel AME Church, where nine people died in a mass shooting Wednesday night.
Savannah
SOURCE: ESRI
Investigators soon broadened their hunt, deploying
local and statewide police
agencies and top agents from
the FBI and the U.S. Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives. They also cir-
Marion
Square
n St.
Calhou
3
.25 mi
STAFF
culated surveillance-camera
images of a young man with
a bowl haircut who appeared
to be the gunman they were
looking for. A bulletin included pictures of the gunman’s
2000 Hyundai Elantra and a
Obama and Vice President Joe
Biden called Charleston Mayor
Joe Riley on Thursday to relay
their condolences. They praised
the efforts to track down the
suspect, Riley said.
“It’s a wonderful sign that we
don’t let these people get away
with these dastardly deeds,” he
said.
But further rattling people as
they mourned the losses, someone called in bomb threats to
a not her dow ntow n A M E
church where residents and
leaders had gathered for a vigil
and to the office building where
Charleston County’s coroner
announced the names of those
who were slain.
Emotions already were raw
this week from the anniversary of another tragedy that also
claimed nine lives. The shooting occurred on the eve of the
eighth remembrance of the
June 18, 2007, Sofa Super Store
blaze in West Ashley that killed
Charleston firefighters.
County Coroner Rae Wooten
said the anniversary made her
team’s response to the shooting
more difficult.
“It all came back,” she said. “It
was somewhat disbelief that we
could ever face something that
horrific again.”
But people from local lead-
ers to the president expressed
resolve to overcome the latest
carnage.
U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C.,
called it “absolutely despicable” for such violence to occur
in a place where people come
together to “laugh, love and rejoice in God’s name.”
Obama said Emanuel AME
and its congregation have risen
before from flames, an earthquake and other dark times to
give hope to Charleston, “and
with our prayers and love and
buoyancy, it will rise now as a
place of peace.”
“Acts like this have no place
in our country and no place in
a civilized society,” Lynch, the
attorney general, added during a Thursday morning news
conference in Washington. “I
want everyone in Charleston
and everyone who has been affected by this tragedy to know
that we will do everything in
our power to help heal this
community and make it whole
again.”
Christina Elmore,
Glenn Smith, Robert Behre,
Melissa Boughton, Tony
Bartelme, Schuyler Kropf
and Jennifer Berry Hawes
contributed to this report.
Church shootings
A8: Friday, June 19, 2015
“It didn’t happen to African-Americans, it didn’t happen to the AME Church, it happened to all of us.”
The Rev. Sidney Davis
Worshippers pour out songs, tears and prayers
Vigil, from A1
before marching with tears and
flowers to a memorial at the
shooting site.
The slayings at the historic
Emanuel AME Church reverberated across the metro area
prompting thousands to pay
their respects and pray for
healing.
The largest of the special services, held at Morris Brown
AME Church in the heat of the
afternoon, drew church officials, politicians and civic leaders who issued calls for unity in
the face of evil and emphasized
the role of the church in fostering healing.
“This crowd, this colorful
crowd, speaks well for Charleston, South Carolina,” said the
Rev. Joe Darby, a presiding elder
of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, at the gathering
held at Morris Brown AME
Church.
And when the standing-roomonly crowd joined in singing a
solemn version of the hymn,
“My Hope is Built,” many began clapping a fast, syncopated,
rhythmic accompaniment that
energized the sanctuary and injected a large dose of optimism
into the occasion.
The suspect in the shooting at the “Mother” Emanuel
AME Church on Calhoun
Street is Dylann Roof, 21, of
Eastover. Roof was arrested in
Shelby, N.C., after a traffic stop.
The news was conveyed to the
vigil gathering at Morris Brown
AME Church and prompted
another burst of applause.
Those slain were attending
a Bible study at the church
Wednesday night. The victims
were officially identified by
Charleston County Coroner
Rae Wooten at a news conference at 3 p.m. Thursday.
State Sen. Clementa Pinckney,
Emanuel AME’s pastor, was
among those killed.
A female survivor told family members that the gunman
initially sat down in the church
for about 45 minutes before
opening fire, according to Dot
Scott, president of the Charleston NAACP. The attack is being
considered a hate crime and is
being investigated by the FBI, as
well as local law enforcement.
At the vigil, which lasted
about an hour and a half and
could not accommodate many
people forced to linger in front
of the church in the heat, the
Rt. Rev. Dr. John Richard Bry-
Grace Beahm/staff
The Rev. Richard Harkness (left) links hands with the Rev. Jack Lewin (right) as the church
sings “We Shall Overcome” at the close of a prayer vigil at Morris Brown AME Church
Thursday in Charleston. The service was blocks away from where a man opened fire
Wednesday night during a prayer meeting inside the Emanuel AME Church, killing nine
people in what authorities are calling a hate crime.
ant, senior bishop of the AME
Church, spoke of the resiliency
of the faithful — “the young
man picked the wrong place.”
He then addressed what he
called the elephant in the
room: “the growth of senseless
violence.”
“We are losing more of our
citizens at home than on battlefields abroad,” he said. “There’s
violence in our playgrounds,
violence in our homes, violence
in our schools. Now there’s violence in our churches. And the
one common denominator is
the gun.”
Bryant then called on lawmakers to take action to limit access
to guns, prompting another big
burst of applause. Most took to
their feet, including U.S. Rep.
Jim Clyburn, Mayor Joe Riley
and other politicians. Only
Sen. Tim Scott and Gov. Nikki
Haley remained seated.
Clyburn, citing Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “Letter
from a Birmingham Jail,” referred to “the appalling silence
of good people,” admonishing
all gathered to “please break
your silence. Speak up!”
Outside the church, hundreds sang “We Shall Overcome,” “Amazing Grace” and
“This Little Light of Mine.”
Black Lives Matter activists
holding signs engaged some
while others formed prayer
circles or stood quietly crying.
Some members of the group,
also members of the North
Charleston Civil Coalition for
Reform, addressed the North
Charleston City Council public
safety committee on Thursday,
a move prompted by the April
shooting death of Walter Scott,
a black man, by a white police
officer.
Visibly shaken, Riley took the
pulpit to honor the victims.
“Less than 24 hours ago our
hearts were broken,” he said
softly. “The unspeakable happened in our city.”
He conveyed the sympathies
of President Barack Obama and
Vice President Joe Biden, and
called Emanuel AME Church
among the city’s most sacred
places.
“And now it’s even more sacred. Sacred because of the
lives lost in it while in prayer.”
And sacred, too, because of the
city’s anguish. “It isn’t when we
fall that counts, it’s how we get
up,” Riley said. “We will look
back on (this tragedy) as a time
when love and goodness came
together to overcome evil.”
Gov. Haley, too, saluted the
nine families enduring loss,
saying that the attack was an
isolated outrage.
“As all eyes of this country
are on our state and our city,”
she said, “what happened in
that church is not the people of
South Carolina.”
However, she said, “If this can
happen in church, we’ve got
some praying to do. If there’s
one thing we can do in South
Carolina it’s pray. ... We are a
state of faith, we are a state of
prayer, we are a state of love.”
Some at the vigil spoke of the
Emanuel AME attack as part of
a larger problem.
Jamie Majors, a public school
teacher and Black Lives Matter
activist, said the bigotry likely
at the root of the tragedy is pervasive and must be addressed
systematically.
“The slave menta lit y in
Charleston is strong,” she said.
Bakari Sellers, former state
representative and son of civil
rights leader Cleveland Sellers,
said he was saddened and confused by this latest eruption of
violence against black people.
Sellers and Pinckney were colleagues and friends.
“There has been too much
death of African-Americans
throughout the state, from
North Augusta to Roseville to
North Charleston to downtown
Charleston. It’s all around. I’m
just tired. I rest in my dad’s
arms. I called him last night and
just cried and screamed. I just
thought, ‘I don’t know where we
are and what we’re doing.’ ”
At Second Presby teria n
Church, the Rev. Sidney Davis
spoke words of hope and comfort, encouraging the congregation to be brave soldiers for the
Lord.
“It didn’t happen to AfricanAmericans, it didn’t happen to
the AME Church, it happened
to all of us,” he said. “It doesn’t
matter if you’re white or black; it
doesn’t matter if you’re Asian or
Native American; what matters
is that you love the Lord.”
Emotions were high at the
church where the shooting took
place. A huge crowd stood outside and prayed, forming a line
to place flowers at a memorial
outside the front doors.
“The amount of sadness that
is coming out of this is overwhelming,” said Carmella Luke
of Charleston. “I think the best
way to move forward is to not
forget.”
Nearby, at Marion Square,
individuals gathered in a large
circle, holding candles and taking turns speaking about the
tragedy.
At Royal Missionary Baptist
Church, the Rev. Isaac Holt
decided to replace the usual
Thursday night Bible study
with a special memorial service
that drew 400 people, including
Carol Hutchinson, 48, of North
Charleston.
“We’re hurt, but we’re not
broken,” she said. “This is going to be a lesson. God is about
love, God is about forgiveness.
I hope this prompts more open
discussion about racism and
gun violence that happens on
a regular basis.”
Holt, who was joined in a
show of solidarity by state
Another vigil
planned
The City of Charleston has
scheduled a community vigil
in response to the Wednesday mass shooting at Emanuel AME Church.
zz The prayer vigil is 6 p.m.
Friday at the College of
Charleston TD Arena, at
the corner of Meeting and
George streets. Space is limited and seating will be on
a first come first serve basis.
Meeting Street will be closed
from Calhoun to George
streets starting at 5 p.m. until
the conclusion of the event.
Motorists are asked to avoid
this area if possible. Attendees are asked not to bring
bags, if possible. Bags will be
searched. Free parking will be
available at the 34 St. Philip
Street garage, Wentworth garage and Gaillard garage.
zz The Charleston Area
Convention and Visitors Bureau has organized a special
citywide church bell ringing
for 10 a.m. Sunday to show
solidarity with “Mother”
Emanuel AME Church. About
a dozen downtown churches
have so far agreed to participate.
—— Adam Parker
Rep. Wendell Gilliard and the
Rev. Nelson Rivers III, pastor
of nearby Charity Missionary
Baptist Church, also spoke of
love and the chance to “turn
an evil into good.”
“There are few things in society and life that remind us
we were all made by the same
hand, and one of those things
is when your heart is hurting,”
Holt said.
And then the congregation
joined hands, swayed and sang
with a loud voice.
Brenda Rindge contributed to this report.
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Church shootings
“There’s really no region of our country that is immune from the plague of hate.”
Southern Poverty Law Center President Richard Cohen
Hate crime may be deadliest in state’s history
hate, from A1
Grace Beahm/staff
The Rev. Jeannie Smalls cries during a prayer vigil at Morris Brown AME
Church on Thursday, in Charleston, blocks away from where a man
opened fire Wednesday night during a prayer meeting inside Emanuel
AME Church, killing nine people in what authorities are calling a hate
crime.
form Crime Reports. Almost 65 percent of those crimes were motivated
by racial bias. That’s data submitted
from just 39 of 418 participating law
enforcement agencies in South Carolina. The rest reported “zero.”
While the FBI counted fewer than
6,000 hate crimes across the country
in 2013, the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates more than 200,000 hate
crimes are committed each year.
Hate crimes, Cohen notes, are “tremendously under-reported.”
“Hate crimes reverberate through
the community because they attack
us along traditional fault lines in
this country, race in particular,” said
Southern Poverty Law Center President Richard Cohen. “Black churches
have been targets because of their symbolism. Black churches have been a
source of activism in our country and
they have been targets of those with
hate in their hearts and those trying
Cynthia Roldan contributed to
to turn back the clock.”
The number of hate groups in the this report. Reach Deanna Pan at
United States reached historically 937-5764.
9/30/15
9/30/15
9/30/15
9/30/15
9/30/15
9/30/15
Churches have long played a
key role in black communities in
the United States. Once, in parts
of the nation, church buildings
were the only places blacks could
gather without fear of violence or
harassment. Because of that, an
attack on a black church took on
special significance.
Here is a partial list of attacks on
black churches since the dawn of
the civil rights era:
June 29, 1958: A dynamite
bomb damages Bethel Baptist
Church, pastored by the civil
rights leader Fred Shuttlesworth
in Birmingham, Ala. A white supremacist was convicted more
than two decades later.
Sept. 15, 1963: 16th Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, Ala: A
bomb planted outside the sanctuary kills four black girls getting
ready for Sunday morning worship. The city’s segregated public
schools were being desegregated at the time. Three Ku Klux
Klansmen were later convicted;
one remains in prison.
Summer 1964: About three
dozen black churches are burned
or bombed in Mississippi during
the drive to register black voters
called Freedom Summer.
June 1996: Then-President Bill
Clinton appoints a task force to
investigate a spate of church
fires, particularly at black churches in the rural South. Of 670
incidents that were investigated
nationwide by October 1998, 225
involved black churches.
Nov. 5, 2008: An arson burns
Macedonia Church of God in
Christ in Springfield, Mass., hours
after Barack Obama is elected as
the nation’s first black president.
Two white men plead guilty and
a third is convicted by jurors in
what was described as a hate
crime.
June 17, 2015: Nine people
gathered for Bible study are shot
to death at the Emanuel African
Methodist Episcopal Church in
Charleston. A white gunman is
arrested.
——Associated Press
R40-1331264
Whipper said. The bill, which has not
been taken up in subcommittee, also
protects from crimes motivated by religion, color, sex, age, national origin
and sexual orientation.
“It’s just not a matter of protecting nonwhites,” Whipper said. “It’s a
matter of what we say are the values of
this country. There’s a responsibility
in every community to act like decent
people.”
Rep. Wendell Gilliard, D-Charleston, also introduced a bill in 2009
that would have increased penalties for
those who committed hate crimes. But
it, too failed to advance, he said, because not enough lawmakers felt there
was a need for it at the time.
Following Wednesday night’s shooting, Gilliard vowed to reintroduce hate
crime legislation. “I don’t care if they
call it a knee-jerk reaction,” Gilliard
said. “I got to do what I got to do.”
Local law enforcement agencies
in South Carolina reported 51 hate
crimes in 2013, the most recent data
available, according to the FBI’s Uni-
A partial list of
attacks on black
churches in the U.S.
®
R60-1334201
the attack, 21-year-old Dylann Roof,
shows a thin, blond-haired young man
wearing symbols of white supremacy
on his jacket.
The FBI is working the shooting as
a hate crime.
“I don’t think there’s ever been anything like that here,” said historian
Jack Bass, a professor emeritus at the
College of Charleston. “I think it’s just
unprecedented.”
While South Carolina has suffered
a long history of racially motivated
arson attacks at black churches, some
as recently as the late 1990s, the state’s
last mass slaying of this scale occurred
139 years ago during the Reconstruction Era, Bass said.
In July 1876, violence erupted in
Hamburg, a small town across the
Savannah River from Augusta. Following a confrontation between white
farmers and the town’s African-American militia, an armed mob of white
men laid siege to the community. Five
black men were summarily executed.
A hate crime, as defined by Congress, enables the Justice Department
to prosecute crimes motivated by the
offender’s bias against race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual
orientation, gender identity or disability.
South Carolina is one of five states,
including Arkansas, Wyoming, Georgia and Michigan, that doesn’t have a
hate crime statute on the books, so
local authorities are forced to rely on
federal authorities to make charges in
these cases.
For years, state lawmakers have tried
and failed repeatedly to push hate
crime legislation through the General
Assembly.
Rep. Set h W hipper, D-Nor t h
Charleston, has tried for more than 15
years to get a bill passed by the Legislature that increased penalties for
hate-related offenses. But not enough
people rallied behind his effort, Whipper said.
His colleagues and many outside of
the Statehouse failed to understand
that the bill went beyond protecting
members of the black community,
high levels in 2011, when the law center counted 1,018 active organizations
across the country. Today, that number
has dipped to 784 as more people have
drifted away from formally organized
groups into the safety of “anonymous
forums on the net,” Cohen said. But
the amount of violence these groups
perpetrate has held steady.
“There’s really no region of our
country that is immune from the
plague of hate,” Cohen said, in spite
of Charleston’s bloody and painful
history as the flash point of the Civil
War. “What we have seen driving the
hate movement are two main factors:
the changing demographics of our
country, symbolized by the presence of an African-American in the
White House. Second, the decline in
our economy, caused by increasing
globalization and the financial crisis, (which) create uncertainty and
anxiety.”
Wednesday night’s attack also ranks
among the deadliest shootings at a
house of worship in the United States.
The last mass shooting at a religious
institution occurred in August 2012,
when Army veteran and avowed neoNazi Wade Michael Page killed six
people at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek,
Wis., before turning his gun on himself.
“I think the publicity around mass
shootings is quite extreme in the present day and so I think a lot of shooters
are going to think of the most sensational type of event and in a way, the
places that are attacked that get the
most press are the safest. A movie
theater in Colorado. A school in Connecticut,” said Dr. Jonathan Metzl, a
psychiatrist at Vanderbilt University
who studies mental illness and mass
shootings.
“Churches fit that model in that
they should be places where people
can leave their fear or violence at the
door. Churches are sanctuaries, and
so disrupting that sense of safety is
a another level of the violence that’s
done in an act like this.”
R24-1323968
Church ShootingS
?10: Friday, June 19, 2015
Churches to ring bells in unity
BY WARREN L. WISE
[email protected]
Several historic Charleston
churches will stand together
Sunday in remembrance of the
victims of the Emanuel AME
Church shootings Wednesday.
The churches will ring their
bells simultaneously at 10 a.m.
Residents and visitors can
participate as well by standing outside the churches and
ringing personal hand bells as
a show of solidarity.
Details of the event were
released Thursday by the
Charleston Area Convention
and Visitors Bureau.
“Charleston is often referred
to as the ‘Holy City,’ a place
where church steeples — not
skyscrapers — dot the skyline.
This Sunday, our bells will ring
loudly and proudly to proclaim
our community’s unity,” the
CVB statement said.
“More than three centuries
ago, Charleston was founded
on the principle of religious
tolerance,” according to the
statement. “As a result, we
live, work and raise our families in a historically strong and
welcoming community. We
this tragedy. We are grateful
for the quick and vigorous response from law enforcement.
As we help lift one another
other up in the wake of this
heartbreaking event, our arms
are open to all,” the statement
said.
As of Thursday, participating
churches include:
File/Paul Zoeller/Staff
St. Michael’s Episcopal
Church will participate
with other Charleston-area
churches in ringing its bells
at 10 a.m. Sunday for the
victims of Wednesday’s
Church on Calhoun Street.
now call upon our collective
strength to renew Charleston’s unity and compassion in
the wake of the nine shooting
deaths at Mother Emanuel
AME Church.
“Our thoughts and prayers
are with everyone involved in
zz The Cathedral of St. Luke
and St. Paul, 126 Coming St.
zz First (Scots) Presbyterian
Church, 53 Meeting St.
zz Grace Episcopal Church,
98 Wentworth St.
zz Mt. Zion AME Church,
5 Glebe St.
zz The Old Bethel Methodist
Church, 222 Calhoun St.
zz St. John’s Lutheran Church,
5 Clifford St.
zz St. Mary’s Roman Catholic
Church, 89 Hasell St.
zz St. Matthews Lutheran
Church, 405 King St.
zz St. Michael’s Church, 14 St.
Michael’s Alley
zz S t . P h i l i p s C h u r c h ,
142 Church St.
zz The Second Presbyterian
Church, 342 Meeting St.
zz The Summerall Chapel, 171
Moultrie Court
City creates fund to help families of victims
Boeing gives 100K
to new benefit
Staff report
The city of Charleston has established the Mother Emanuel
Hope Fund to provide financial assistance to families of the
victims of Wednesday’s mass
shooting.
Boeing stated on Thursday it
will donate $100,000 to the fund.
“Boeing’s commitment to this
community is deep and strong,
and we share in its grief,” said
Beverly Wyse, Boeing South
Carolina vice president and
general manager. “We are also
committed to being a part of the
healing in the days and weeks to
come, and we continue to keep
the families and friends of the
victims in our thoughts and
prayers.”
Contributions can be made
online, starting at noon Friday,
at the Wells Fargo website, at any
Wells Fargo branch or my mailing a check (made out to “Mother Emanuel Hope Fund”) to:
Mother Emanuel Hope Fund,
c/o City of Charleston, P.O. Box
304, Charleston, SC 29402.
Lauren Prescott/Staff
Avis Smith, a family member of Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, receives a laying of the
hands during vigil held at Royal Missionary Baptist Church in North Charleston on Thursday for the nine slain Wednesday night at Emanuel AME Church.
Some cancel events following tragedy
BY DAVID qUICK
[email protected]
In the wake of Wednesday evening’s national tragedy at Emanuel AME Church, organizers of
several events set for this weekend have postponed them, while
some are re-directing proceeds
to a victim’s family fund.
Among the events postponed
was the Yogapop 5: Play event
on Saturday at Brittlebank Park.
Planners involved instead announced a Peace Meditation at
8 a.m. Saturday at Mount Pleasant Memorial Waterfront Park.
The new date for Yogapop 5:
Play had not been decided.
Some events, such as Saturday’s Deluge water festival at
Patriots Point, will still be held
but will re-direct proceeds to
the Mother Emanuel Hope
Fund, established by the city
of Charleston to help the victims’ relatives pay for funerals
for their loved ones, counseling
services and other needs as they
heal from the tragedy.
The Charleston RiverDogs
announced that their regularly
scheduled games at Riley Park
will continue and that proceeds
will go to the fund.
The Friends of the Library
book sale set for Friday through
Sunday at Charleston County’s
Main Library on Calhoun Street
has been postponed and the
event will be rescheduled at a
later date.
Candidates for president who
had scheduled appearances in
the Lowcountry also postponed
events. Republican candidate
Donald J. Trump postponed a
visit to Sun City in Bluffton on
Friday citing the “senseless act
of violence and hate.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.,
postponed a talk at Burke High
School in Charleston on Sunday
evening because of the shootings
and urged supporters to make
a donation to the Emanuel
AME Church.

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CHURCH SHOOTINGS
“He made a lot of racist jokes, but you don’t really take
them seriously like that. You don’t really think of it like that.”
John Mullins, high school friend
Suspect known for racist symbols, remarks
Dylann Roof is flown from N.C.
to Charleston for booking at jail
By TONY BARTELME
[email protected]
The young white man arrested
Thursday in the shooting deaths at
a historic black Charleston church
lived near the swamps of the Congaree River, wore patches popular in
white supremacist circles, had strong
conservative beliefs about the South
and may have recently received a gun
for his birthday, according to friends
and relatives.
Just before noon, police arrested
Dylann Storm Roof, 21, about 250
miles from Charleston in Shelby,
N.C., ending a 15-hour manhunt. He
waived extradition and was flown to
Charleston on a state plane. He landed
at Charleston International Airport
and was whisked to the county jail
for booking.
But the public’s first glimpse of the
shooting suspect had come earlier in
the morning when police circulated
surveillance photographs.
The photos showed a thin white man
with a bowl haircut enter the wooden
doors of Emanuel AME Church at
8:16 p.m., after parking a dark-colored
Hyundai. The shooting happened
about an hour later.
Carson Cowles, 56, told Reuters by
phone that he recognized the man in
the surveillance photo as his nephew.
“The more I look at him, the more I’m
convinced, that’s him,” he said, adding that he believed the shooter’s father
had recently given him a .45-caliber
handgun as a birthday present.
“Nobody in my family had seen
anything like this coming,” Cowles
also told Reuters. “I said, if it is him,
and when they catch him, he’s got to
pay for this.” Cowles said he had told his
sister, Roof’s mother, several years ago
that Roof was too introverted. “I said he
was like 19 years old, he still didn’t have
a job, a driver’s license or anything like
that and he just stayed in his room a lot
of the time.”
Roof lived in Eastover, a rural town
between Columbia and Congaree
National Park. Police gathered by the
two-story log house Thursday. An
American flag hung over the entrance.
When a reporter approached, a man
inside the house said he would call
deputies if the reporter didn’t leave.
But a picture of a troubled young
man began to emerge of Roof, based
on reports from friends, two arrests
and the digital trail he left on social
media sites.
On his Facebook page, he listed
his high school as White Knoll High
School in Lexington County about
40 miles west of Eastover. Lexington
County officials said that he dropped
out of White Knoll in February 2010,
when he was in the 10th grade. It
wasn’t immediately clear whether he
transferred to another school.
His life took a turn on Feb. 28 when
he was arrested at the Columbiana Centre mall. Employees there called police
after Roof asked questions about the
number of employees in the stores and
when the stores closed.
Officers then found Roof wearing allblack clothes and carrying a pill bottle of
Suboxone, a painkiller used to treat opiate addiction. The arrest affidavit said
that Roof admitted that he didn’t have
a prescription for the drugs.
He was banned for a year from the
mall, but on April 26, Columbia police arrested him again at the mall, this
time on a trespassing charge. He was
fined $262.50.
On May 21, Roof’s Facebook profile
picture changed to one of him standing
in a swamp of bare cypress trees covered in Spanish moss. He had a moptop haircut and looked straight ahead
at the camera with a frown. He wore a
black jacket with two flag patches on
the right front. One flag was the old
South African flag that was flown during Apartheid; the other was the flag
flown by white-ruled Rhodesia, now
Zimbabwe. Both flags are known to be
Chuck Burton/AP
Shooting suspect Dylann Storm Roof, 21, is escorted Thursday from the Cleveland County Courthouse
in Shelby, N.C.. Roof is the suspect in the shooting deaths of nine people Wednesday night at the historic
Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston.
symbols popular in white supremacist
groups, experts say.
The Southern Poverty Law Center
also found a photograph of Roof sitting on the hood of a Hyundai with a
“Confederate States of America” tag.
A friend, Joseph Meek Jr., said Roof told
him recently that black people were taking
over the world and that something needed
to be done for the white race. The two had
been best friends in middle school but lost
touch when Roof moved away about five
years ago. They recently reconnected,
Meek said, adding that Roof’s racial comments came completely out of the blue and
that he could tell something was troubling
his friend.
Meek told The Associated Press that
when he woke up Wednesday morning, Roof was at his house, sleeping in
his car outside. Later that day, Meek
went to a nearby lake with a couple of
other people, but Roof hated the outdoors and decided he’d rather go see
a movie.
Dalton Tyler told ABC News that he
had known Roof for a year. “He was
big into segregation and other stuff.
He said he wanted to start a civil war.
He said he was going to do something
like that and then kill himself.”
Others were shocked over the news
of the shooting and his arrest. “I never
thought he’d do something like this,”
high school friend Antonio Metze told
The Associated Press. “He had black
friends.”
Kimberly Konzny, Meek’s mother,
said she didn’t know why Roof was in
Charleston and was not aware of his
being involved in any church groups or
saying anything racist. “I don’t know
what was going through his head,”
Konzny told the AP. “He was a really
sweet kid. He was quiet. He only had
a few friends.”
John Mullins, who went to high
school with Roof, told The Daily
Beast that he remembers him as being
“kind of wild” but wasn’t considered
an outcast. Mullins said that Roof had
a reputation for making racist statements and had “that kind of Southern
pride, I guess some would say — strong
conservative beliefs. He made a lot of
racist jokes, but you don’t really take
them seriously like that. You don’t really think of it like that.”
Cynthia Roldan and Diane Knich
of The Post and Courier and The
Associated Press contributed to
this report.
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Opinion
?18: Friday, June 19, 2015
Founded in 1803
PAMELA J. BROWNING, Publisher
Mitch Pugh, Executive Editor
Charles R. Rowe, Editorial Page Editor
Frank Wooten, Assistant Editor
Editorials
Unite against inhumanity
C
harleston has suffered considerable tragedy in its 345-year
history, including war, fire,
storm and earthquake. But
in terms of shocking inhumanity, the
atrocity that occurred Wednesday night
in a place of worship on Calhoun Street
transcended those past horrors.
That’s because our Holy City was defiled by this horrendous pairing of words
— “church massacre.”
Nine people at a Bible study gathering were killed by a single gunman at
the historic Emanuel AME Church,
located on Calhoun Street between
Marion Square and the main branch of
the Charleston County Library. Those
murdered included state Sen. Clementa
Pinckney, the church’s pastor.
The suspect, Dylann Roof, was apprehended Thursday morning in North
Carolina.
Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen
has classified it as a “hate crime.” So has
the FBI. Mayor Joe Riley described the
murders as “beyond incomprehensible.”
But the loss is all too real, and our collective sense of grief is overwhelmed by
the utter savagery of the act.
American mass shootings have occurred on college campuses, schools,
malls, military bases and elsewhere.
Each was ghastly and appalling.
This was wholesale murder in a church.
Bringing the killer to justice can’t bring
back the innocent lives brutally ended
Wednesday night.
It would, however, be a significant step
forward on the long journey back from
again staring into the abyss at mankind’s
awful potential for the unspeakable.
And this latest case of a lone, deranged
person with a firearm killing so many
others should further inform the ongo-
ing debate about gun policy in our community, state and nation.
The Second Amendment guarantees
“the right to keep and bear arms.” But
that assurance, written in the 18th century, should be reasonably and practically interpreted in light of 21st century
realities — including the grimly familiar
prevalence of U.S. gun violence.
President Barack Obama delivered this
apt reminder Thursday at the White
House after expressing “deep sorrow”
over the killings: “We don’t have all the
facts but we do know that once again
innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict
harm had no trouble getting a gun.”
So now Charleston joins Columbine,
Colo.; Blacksburg, Va.; Newtown, Conn.;
Fort Hood, Texas, and other communities on the ever-lengthening list of
American places scarred by modern
mass shootings.
And now Charlestonians — and our
neighbors across the tri-county and
state — stand together to mourn our
dead and comfort their grieving family
and friends.
A shared revulsion for the killer’s inhumanity — and for the persisting poison of racism that apparently sparked
his barbaric deed — unites us. A shared
commitment for a better, more understanding future drives us.
President Obama sounded confident
about that resolve, hailing “the outpouring of unity and strength and fellowship
and love across Charleston today, from
all races, of all faiths, of all places of worship ...”
As Mayor Riley put it Thursday: “We
are all in this together.”
And together, Charleston must — and
will — rise above this tragedy, too.
The road to better infrastructure
T
hanks to comparatively inexpensive oil and gas, Americans
have a major opportunity to
rebuild the nation’s economy
and its infrastructure, creating perhaps
millions of jobs and a higher standard
of living. America’s leadership should
seize the opportunity.
The nation’s current energy abundance
is due to two factors: the tremendous
gains in American oil and gas production due to fracking, and the decision
by Saudi Arabia to maintain its own
production, causing energy prices to fall.
But fracking’s opponents in the United
States could curtail production here, and
rising world demand could again push
the price of oil from around $60 a barrel
to $100 or more.
Public policy in the states and Washington should be able to swiftly reach
a reasonable agreement on fracking
standards, continue pushing for energy
efficiencies, and raise the gasoline tax
moderately at a time when consumers
are paying 30 to 40 percent less for gasoline than a year or two ago.
That situation certainly applies here in
South Carolina, where the gas tax hasn’t
been raised in more than a quarter century.
After all, a gas tax is tantamount to a
user fee for those who travel on our nation’s roads.
Forging common safety standards for
fracking should settle a raging dispute
with environmentalists and provide a
stable framework for the industry. And
improving energy efficiency rewards by
reducing demand and stabilizing prices.
Higher gasoline taxes are needed for a
number of reasons.
In many cases the old rates are out
of date and do not reflect inflation in
the cost of road building, maintenance
and repair. America’s motor vehicles
are becoming more efficient, burning
less gasoline and diesel per mile, reducing tax revenues. Stopgap measures
to replenish highway trust funds have
not kept pace with the growing backlog of highway maintenance. New and
better roads haven’t kept up with the
demand.
The pay-as-you-go system of highway
finance has simply not kept pace and
desperately needs overhaul.
Poorly maintained, overcrowded roads
aren’t just a threat to human life. They
depress economic growth. Politicians
who dodge this issue are simply making matters worse for the great majority of Americans who are dependent on
good roads.
As a recent study by Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter
observes, the current trend in energy
supply and prices is “perhaps the single
largest opportunity to improve the trajectory of the U.S. economy.”
But we could fritter away this competitive advantage if we fail to take the
necessary steps to benefit the nation as
a whole.
Letters to the Editor
Finally fixed
A little over six years ago I
started a quest to get Glenwood Drive repaved. I wrote
to Gov. Mark Sanford, explaining that the road was an
accident waiting to happen.
It was so bad in certain areas
that you had to drive in the
oncoming lane to dodge being
swallowed up by potholes.
For months I reported and
documented calls to the S.C.
Department of Transportation telling them about potholes that needed to be filled.
I made it a matter of record in
case someone got killed.
I also sent letters, and I received responses in writing
that there wasn’t any money
to repave the road. So I let the
issue drop until a little over a
year ago when it got ridiculously bad. I contacted S.C.
Sen. Tom Young Jr.
Being a former Marine
squad leader in mortars, I can
only liken the appearance of
the road going toward Pine
Log to a war zone that had
been bombed. I asked Sen.
Young to look into it. After
numerous emails back and
forth, the residents of Glenwood Drive finally got satisfaction.
The damaged road was repaved from Pine Log to where
it met the undamaged section
going toward Silver Bluff. The
SCDOT crew did a fabulous
job. It even detailed the areas
around the drainage sewers,
removing the dirt that used to
clog the system.
I want to thank all for doing a great job, and a special
thanks to Sen. Young for
making it happen.
Gregory J. Topliff
Glenwood Drive
Warrenville
I urge you to enjoy a visit to
the center, or kindly contribute to this worthy cause. thecenterforbirdsofprey.org.
Barbara Merritt
Arthur Hills Circle
Charleston
Stunning breach
No one has ever told the
federal government that it
was under, or could be under,
One year ago there was a
cyber attack. It will be of inyoung adult red shoulder
terest to see if the Justice Dehawk in our neighbor’s backpartment and White House
yard, unable to fly, only able to pursue the cyber breach at the
walk to a pond to drink. After Office of Personnel Manageproviding food for it for a few ment, involving current and
days, it was apparent that he
retired employees’ data files,
was extremely disabled.
that could contain up to 780
I called the Center for Birds different pieces of informaof Prey and within two hours tion, with the same ardor
a volunteer came to our
it investigated the IRS and
home, captured the injured
Benghazi fiascoes or as it does
bird and brought him to
when trying to collect a big
the center. I asked them to
fine from a corporation.
contact us about the bird’s
The hacked data include
condition.
information on congressional
On June 13, Sara from the
staffers (no wonder Harry Reid
Birds of Prey Center called
is upset), the FBI and CIA and
and said the bird had been
also other sensitive job descripvery sick, lost his feathers and tions. Sadder yet, this apparcould not catch food. And one ently went on for four months
year later she remembered to
before being discovered.
call back, to say he had fully
And the government said
recovered, and they successthat Target Corp. was remiss
fully released him to make a
in its handling of people’s pernew home in the wild.
sonal information.
The care, dedication and
compassion of the people who W.D. Watts
work and volunteer at this
Bishop Gadsden Way
center is unprecedented.
Charleston
A soaring cause
Readers reflect in wake of outrage
A time to care
know his story and what
might have been his motive.
He has had his 15 minutes of
attention. Please focus on the
nine people who have died
and let us know their stories
and how their lives mattered
and the good they did in their
place of prayer.
Let us be a Holy City.
Our hearts are with the
members of Emanuel AME
Church and all those touched
by the horrific shooting on
Wednesday night. This tragedy is beyond comprehension.
We grieve to the depth of
our souls for those who died,
for their families and friends,
Annie Stone
and for the sanctity of the
church, which was so violated. Bayview Drive
How profoundly sad it is that Mount Pleasant
such unspeakable violence
has, once again, called all of
us to come together and truly
care for one another.
A reporter asked on national
TV on Thursday if South
Melinda Hamilton
Carolina would fly the ConPresident
federate flag that hangs at the
League of Women Voters
Statehouse in Columbia at
of the Charleston Area
half mast in honor of those
Parrot Creek Way
who died on Wednesday.
Charleston
It stayed at full mast.
But this would be a good day
to take it down, for good.
Remove it now
Welcoming church
Like most of Charleston, I
was saddened, shocked and
sickened in the pit of my being on Thursday morning
when I learned of the shooting at Mother Emanuel and
the deaths of Sen. Clementa
Pinckney and his parishioners.
I am a white woman raised
in the Jewish religion. I have
lived in Charleston for 24
years. I have attended services,
weddings, celebrations and
funerals in many of our city’s
churches and synagogues during these years.
However, it was during the
celebration and coming home
services at Mother Emanuel
for Jack McCray back in November of 2011 when I first
stepped inside this beautiful
church.
During the memorial celebration, I leaned over to my
husband and said, “I have never
felt more welcomed anywhere”
than the welcome we received
walking into that church.
I don’t want to hear about
the suspect. I don’t want to
Nancy Zisk
New Town Lane
Charleston
Keep the faith
Driving to work on Highway 17 North on Thursday,
my heart was heavy, trying
to comprehend what the nine
families who lost loved ones
the night before at Emanuel
AME Church might be feeling. And to my right, at the
site of the former Sofa Super
Store, were nine firemen in
full dress uniform, standing
at attention to remember the
men who lost their lives eight
years ago on June 18.
So here we have another
Charleston 9 at a church. And
people might be thinking,
“Where is God in all of this?”
As indicated in the church
name, He is Emanuel, God
with us. He is here. He is the
one who promises to comfort
those who mourn. He is the
one who promises that “for
those who love God, all things
work together for good.”
Remember that He created a
perfect world, but man messed
it up, thus the beginning of
evil, grief, disease and loss we
have encountered ever since.
Let this be the time we are
His hands and feet, to find
the criminal, and to comfort
the people.
Remember the families
who mourn. Remember the
promises we’ve been given.
Remember what we know
about God. We know these
things in our minds. Now if
our minds can only explain it
to our broken hearts.
Susan Greene
Nautical Chart Drive
Charleston
Unbroken spirit
Why would someone go
into a church, spend an hour
listening and talking with
people, bow his head in prayer
with them and then shoot
these same people?
People whom, before he
walked into that church, he
didn’t even know.
It’s been called a “hate
crime.” But if the goal was
to divide this community
and cause neighbor to turn
against neighbor, then it will
surely fail.
Charlestonians everywhere,
those who are black or white,
Hispanic or Asian, those who
have lived here all their lives
and those (like me) who just
recently arrived here, will not
let that happen.
Charlestonians will decide
that we must join hands and
support each other as one
community, one city. It may
take some time. It may take a
few tears and a lot of prayers,
but trust me, Charleston will
survive.
And I, for one, am very
proud to be a part of that.
JATIKA MANIGAULT
Windermere Boulevard
Charleston