It’s been three and a half weeks since June 17, 2015, the day that the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina suffered from a mass shooting, which resulted in the deaths of nine of the ten people shot. Among the victims was Clementa C. Pinckney, who served as a state senator in the South Carolina Senate. The primary suspect for the crime is Dylann Roof, who was taken into custody the day after the shooting.
The Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, founded in 1816, is the oldest church of its denomination in South Carolina and the whole American South. From its foundations, the African Methodists have been at the forefront of the fight against slavery, racism, and civil rights. The denomination split from the white Methodists due to increasing discrimination and racism, particularly over the issue of burial grounds. Its initial years were ones of great hardship and suffering, as laws at the time heavily favoured white people and restricted the actions of African Americans; church members had been arrested and executed in the 1820s for allegedly organizing slave revolts. The church itself had been razed in 1822, and was even outlawed from 1834 until the end of the American Civil War in 1865. During this time, the church held services in secret and suffered heavy persecution.
The church has been politically active since the end of the Civil War, and its pastors have served as South Carolina Senators and even as representatives in Congress. Martin Luther King spoke at the church in 1962 at the peak of the civil rights movement. The church has over 1800 members and is a patron of local art and culture.
On June 17 2015, at around 9:00 PM, shots of gunfire were heard in the vicinity of the church. Ten church members were involved in a bible study at the time; all were shot, and nine would later die of their sustained injuries. The tenth was injured but survived, and claims the shooter said he left her alive to “tell people what happened here”. Included among the dead was Sen. Rev. Pinckney, the church pastor, who had been a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1997-2000, and a state senator from 2000 onwards. He had served as pastor of the Church since 2010.
The primary suspect in the case is 21-year old Dylann Roof. He had previously purchased a Glock 41 .45-cal handgun. At the time, he was on probation and was not allowed to carry a handgun.
This was one of the largest mass murders ever to take place in a place of worship on American soil. Given the historical significance of the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, it is reasonable to assume that the attack was racially motivated, and the Department of Justice is currently investigating the possibility that the attack was a hate crime. Additional evidence pointing to the shootings being a hate crime is that Roof has been known to associate with neo-Nazi and white supremacist elements. He has made racist comments against Blacks, Jews, Hispanics, and East Asians on his website, and also contains his thoughts that “blacks were taking over the world”. He was also known to wear a jacket with the flags of Rhodesia and apartheid-era South Africa on it. Rhodesia was a former British colony that existed where Zimbabwe is today and was heavily racist, favouring the white minority colonists over the black majority. After being taken into custody, Roof has also admitted that his intention was to attempt to start a “race war.” In light of all this, it is highly likely that the shootings were racially motivated.
In the aftermath of the shootings, much controversy and discussion was generated, on a myriad of issues, from gun control to the status of the Confederate Flag to the proper use of the word “terrorism” when describing attacks.
Gun control would naturally come up as a topic of discussion after shootings because the simple fact is that the shooting could have possibly been avoided if there was tighter regulation of firearms in America. In addition, an article published in The Washington Post on July 10, 2015 states that FBI Director James Comey attributed Roof’s ability to purchase a firearm to lapses in the FBI’s background check system; the mentioned system will need to undergo review and improvement to help ensure such tragedies will be prevented in the future.
The controversy regarding the status of the Confederate flag is not directly related to the shooting, but is tangentially. The Confederate flag was the flag used in the American Civil War by the army of the Confederate States of America, which comprised all the states that seceded from the Union. This included all the states in the Southern United States, from Texas in the west to Virginia in the east. The line between Union and Confederate states could largely be drawn by the issue of slavery; the states of the Union had banned slavery, with a few exceptions, while all the states of the Confederacy still allowed slavery and thrived on it. While the American Civil War was fought mainly on states’ rights versus federal power, the issue of slavery was still one of the prime underlying factors which caused the war to occur.
On Roof’s website, there is an image of Roof posing with a handgun and the Confederate flag. However, the real controversy over the flag began on the day after the shooting. Many flags were flown at half-staff as a solemn sign of remembrance for those that died on the day before, including at the South Carolina State House. However, the Confederate flag at the State House was at full-staff; it lacked a pulley system and thus could not be flown at half-staff, and it could only be removed after a two-thirds majority decision in the State House of Representatives. This sparked uproar across the United States. Many politicians, including Barack Obama, have called for the removal of public Confederate flags, and many places have already started to take them down as a result. Wal-Mart has stopped selling items featuring the Confederate flag, and other retailers such as Amazon, eBay, and Sears have followed suit. The flag has generated such controversy because, even though it represents many things such as Southern culture, it also represents an era of slavery and racism, and today America does not want to indicate they still support that in any way.
Although the issues that has been raised by the shooting are legitimate and should be addressed, the most important thing right now is that the families of the dead should be comforted, and that America and the world stand united against racism and hate crimes. President Obama delivered Sen. Rev. Pinckney’s eulogy on June 25, and called for “an open heart” from everyone for the victims of the shooting. The Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church has been at the forefront of black civil rights, and the tragedy that has befallen it has touched myriads beyond the church’s flock. Together, the church and America must move beyond the tragedy and ensure it never happens again.
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