We Are Charleston

by Herb Frazier

  Soon Calhoun Street, ironically named for pro-slavery senator and vice president John C. Calhoun, was swarming with police cruisers and ambulances. The street was sealed at the cross streets on either end of the block. Police armed with assault weapons were on patrol as a helicopter hovered overhead. When WCSC television anchorman Raphael James arrived on the scene with another reporter and two videographers around 9:20 p.m., he didn’t know many details about the shooting, but when the coroner arrived, his worst fears were confirmed. James knew Pinckney and hoped that he was still at the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign event elsewhere in the city that evening. As James and his crew were stationed at Calhoun and Meeting streets, Post and Courier reporter Andrew Knapp was arriving from the east side of the church. He had grabbed his cameras and other gear from his car and begun to walk toward the church. Before any official announcement, Knapp knew the magnitude of the tragedy. He heard on his smartphone app, which monitors emergency channels, that eight were dead inside the church.5

  A crowd had already gathered at the edge of the barrier west of the church, and Raphael James was at the center of it. An acquaintance approached and said his aunt, Susie Jackson, was in the church. Apart from that, there was no clear sense of who was inside Mother Emanuel, who the victims were, and whether or not there were any survivors. Church and community leaders and more journalists began to arrive. According to James, “the atmosphere was electric, and tension was in the air.”6 For all they knew, the shooter was nearby. Those tense times were heightened when James and others heard a loud bang that sounded like a gunshot. The sound seemed to have come from a corner gas station. James saw that police had grabbed a young white man wearing dark pants and a light gray sweatshirt. The man matched the description of the gunman, but as James points out, this description would fit “85 percent of the thousands of male College of Charleston students living within a quarter-mile radius of Mother Emanuel AME Church.”7 The man was soon released. He was a local photographer who was taking pictures of the people who had gathered nearby.

  It hadn’t taken long for authorities to see a clear image of the killer from church security cameras, and that image was circulated among police nationwide. Fear was palpable; could there be more shootings? “In that moment, we could believe anything,” James later said.8 News crews were moved another block west of the church. Soon there were bomb threats at nearby hotels. Although no one was evacuated, traffic was diverted. Additional vehicles from the coroner’s office pulled up to the church. Was at least one of the bomb scares a ruse to clear journalists and others away from the scene when the bodies were being removed? Hundreds had gathered in Marion Square, a large open space west of the church. While clergy tried to calm people, activists and others were seething with rage and threatening, “We’re going to get this guy.”9 Peace prevailed, however, and around 11:30 p.m. at a press conference, Charleston mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. was adamant about referring to the shootings as a hate crime. Charleston police chief Greg Mullen confirmed the worst: eight people were found dead in the church. (Authorities would later confirm Simmons had died at the Medical University Hospital.) At that time no names were released, but word circulated that Pinckney had left the Clinton event for the Bible study.

  Meanwhile, the families were notified, and they gathered at two nearby hotels. Church elders and pastors, ten chaplains, and a number of community leaders were there to comfort them. People initially gathered in the Courtyard Marriott, which is located almost across the street from the church, but it was decided the hotel was too close to the crime scene, so everyone was moved farther away, to the Embassy Suites hotel on Meeting Street. According to the Coastal Crisis Chaplaincy’s senior chaplain on the scene, Rob Dewey Sr., within an hour of the shooting, approximately three hundred relatives, friends, and members of the church were gathered in the ballroom of the Embassy Suites. They ranged in age from toddlers to the elderly. Once the facts emerged, the coroner’s office met with family members of the nine who were killed in two of the smaller side rooms. Once Presiding Elder Norvel Goff and other AME pastors arrived, they prayed together, and Goff led the group in the old hymn “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”10 According to Black Lives Matter activist Muhiyidin d’Baha—who was one of the people who wanted to shut down the city in hopes of finding the killer—elder James Johnson of the National Action Network told him to let the police do their job and go comfort the grieving relatives. When d’Baha met with family members, grief and fear, not anger, were palpable.11 People stayed at the hotel until 4:30 a.m. The city was on high alert, and few slept that long, hot night in June.

  The Federal Bureau of Investigation joined the investigation almost immediately, releasing a photograph of a black 2000 Hyundai sedan. By Thursday morning, Dylann Roof, a twenty-one-year-old from Eastover, South Carolina, was identified as the suspect. Authorities discovered that his ATM card was used in Charlotte, North Carolina, a little before six o’clock that morning. Around the same time, Roof’s father phoned the authorities and identified him from the security footage, according to a court affidavit from Charleston police. Later that morning Deborah Dills, who worked at a florist shop in Kings Mountain, North Carolina, was on her way to work when she recognized Roof’s Hyundai and his distinct haircut from newspaper photos. She called her boss, who notified local police. A minister of music at her own church, Dills was devastated by the news of the church shooting and told the Post and Courier that she had been at her own church Wednesday night and felt that it could easily have been her that was murdered.12 At 10:40 a.m. on June 18, police pulled Roof’s car over onto a dirt driveway along US Highway 74 in Shelby, North Carolina. Officers slowly approached the vehicle, and Roof was cooperative. He was searched for weapons, handcuffed, and arrested in a surprisingly calm manner.

  Back in Charleston, leaders, community activists, clergy, and caring citizens were called together for a prayer vigil at Morris Brown, another historic AME church, by Presiding Elder Joseph Darby. Hundreds filled the pews, including Mayor Riley, South Carolina governor Nikki R. Haley, US representative James Clyburn, South Carolina senator Tim Scott, and dozens of other officials. Hundreds more gathered outside to sing hymns and pray, to hold one another up in the midday sun. Police handed out bottles of water, and nearby, a furniture store opened its air-conditioned showrooms. The crowd was both black and white, and no one seemed to notice or care.

  It became immediately clear that the community was joined together in grief and support, but the day after the prayer vigil, numerous bomb threats were reported in and around Charleston, and at least three buildings were evacuated, including a church. Still, the community continued to come together across racial lines, and a Friday night prayer vigil was planned at the College of Charleston basketball arena. Thousands attended, and the stage was filled with clergy, local and state officials, and police. This came to the attention of Reverend Nelson Rivers III, who also noticed US Republican senators Tim Scott and Lindsey Graham and Republican congressman Mark Sanford in the audience. It was an opportunity for him to call for the removal of the Confederate flag from the statehouse. He knew “they need[ed] to hear this now,”13 and when he spoke, the mostly white crowd jumped to its feet in thunderous applause. He was astounded.

  Mayor Riley, an active supporter of taking down the flag, spoke about dedicating the planned International African American Museum to the victims and in addressing the community’s collective grief, stated, “In our broken hearts, we realize we love each other more.”14 Local leaders called for unity and peace. There were prayers and hymns, and everyone was handed a rose when they walked through the doors. Most of the attendees carried their roses to Calhoun Street, past Anderson Cooper and other recognizable media personalities reporting from platforms assembled on the sidewalks, to join the throng of people paying respects in front of Mother Emanuel. One block east of the church, a wreath hung on the door of Charleston County Public Library in honor of long-serving librarian Cynthia Graham Hurd.

&
nbsp; The day after the shooting, President Obama spoke about his confidence in “the outpouring of unity and strength and fellowship and love across Charleston . . . from all races, from all faiths, from all places of worship.”15 The president’s grim face showed his sadness over yet another episode of gun violence. He and Vice President Joe Biden had met Pinckney, who was also a South Carolina state senator. The president came to Charleston within days to eulogize Pinckney. The city of Charleston quickly established the Mother Emanuel Hope Fund to help families of the victims; and the aircraft maker Boeing, which has a plant in North Charleston, immediately donated $100,000. Similar donations would soon follow from other companies with South Carolina ties, including Volvo Cars of North America, Benefitfocus, Google, and Starbucks. The Carolina Panthers football team offered to pay for all of the funerals. Benefit concerts were planned, and more than fifty restaurants joined forces for a fund-raising event called “A Community United.” People gathered to form a giant heart in Marion Square; numerous church prayer vigils were held. So many community events were happening that the Post and Courier featured a daily listing. Everyone wanted to do something to help in whatever capacity they could. And every day thousands of people filed past Mother Emanuel to lay flowers and cards, to light candles, to openly weep and pray.

  On Sunday morning Mother Emanuel opened its doors, and people passed by the white media tents to attend church. Every church in Charleston rang bells at 10:00 a.m. in a show of solidarity. Churches all across the country did the same. The Bridge to Peace unity chain, a march across the two-mile Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge, was planned on Facebook for that evening. (Ironically, the bridge is named for former federal and state legislator Arthur Ravenel, a segregationist who once called the NAACP the “National Association for the Advancement of Retarded People”16—just another contradiction in Charleston’s conflicted history of race relations.) The march was led by relatives of those who were slain. A few thousand people were expected, but more than twenty-five thousand joined in. As people reached the bridge, they held hands and continued marching. Charleston-area resident and comedian Stephen Colbert and his family participated. Line after line of families with children waved American flags and carried homemade signs of support and gratitude for local leaders. The Red Cross and local police handed out thousands of bottles of water. There were nine minutes of silence, spontaneous singing, and prayers—always prayers.

  TWO

  FORGIVENESS

  An air of fear that had hung over Charleston for a day was blown out to sea with the quick arrest of a suspect. Behind it rushed in the urgent curiosity to discover who Dylann Roof was and why he had committed this shocking deed that was quickly labeled a hate crime. Fate had handed the church such a horrific tragedy—not just for the nine souls who died but also for the five who were destined to survive it—and everyone wanted, needed, answers.

  Roof had been named a suspect before noon on the day after the shooting. A nationwide police bulletin warned the suspect was armed, dangerous, and should be approached with caution. Later that day Roof was captured in Shelby, North Carolina, a three-and-a-half-hour drive northwest of Charleston. His older sister, Amber Roof, lived there with her fiancé. Roof was cooperative as he was searched, handcuffed, and arrested. A gun was found in the car. Roof was allowed to exit his vehicle before he was frisked. He was also casually escorted to a police cruiser and allowed to step into the backseat of the vehicle under his own power. After police took him to a local lockup, he announced he was hungry. Police got him a Burger King meal. Social media reacted to a perceived double standard in Roof’s treatment that was in stark contrast to the rough handling of numerous black suspects, particularly twenty-five-year-old Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland, who was unrestrained in a fast-moving police van in April 2015, during which he suffered a fatal spinal cord injury.

  Roof did not challenge his return to South Carolina. He was flown back to Charleston on a state-owned plane that evening under very tight security, then placed in the Charleston County Detention Center in North Charleston. He was confined in a cell near Michael Slager, the former North Charleston police officer who was charged with murder in the April 4, 2015, death of fifty-four-year-old Walter Scott, an unarmed black North Charleston resident who was shot in the back. The day after Roof’s arrest, nine families were preparing to get their first answers about the tragedy that had been visited upon them.

  Ethel Lance fussed over the appearance of the historic Emanuel sanctuary. For three decades as the church’s custodian, she’d taken pride in keeping the church spotless. Lance’s daughter Esther said that if her mother “saw a scuff on the floor she’d say, ‘Oh no, don’t ya’ll mess up my floor.’ ”1 At one time her duties even extended a block down Calhoun Street, where she’d worked as a custodian at the Gaillard Municipal Auditorium from its opening in 1968 until her retirement in 2002.

  Ethel Lance’s personality mirrored her attention to detail in everything, especially her family. She was a doting but no-nonsense protector of seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Esther Lance said her seventy-year-old mother was a “strong” woman. “If she saw something wrong, she’ll tell you. When you right, you’re right. But if you’re wrong, she will let you know. She’s not going to sugar-coat anything.”2

  Ethel Lance and her husband, Nathaniel Lance, raised their family in Charleston’s West Ashley suburb. Following his death in 1988, Ethel took over as matriarch. Of her five children, all but one is alive; cancer claimed her daughter Terrie Washington at age fifty-three in 2013. At Ethel’s funeral, Terrie’s daughter, Najee Washington, said her mother’s and grandmother’s reunion in heaven filled her with “pure joy.”3

  Ethel was the cousin of Susie Jackson, also slain at the church. Eighty-seven years old, Susie was a church trustee and choir member. She had two children of her own, but she opened her Alexander Street home, located not far from the church, to everyone who needed a meal or shelter. Like Ethel, Susie also was the matriarch of her family. “She was a loving person, she never had no animosity toward nobody,” said Susie’s son, Walter Jackson of Cleveland, Ohio. Susie Jackson had raised her son in a government-funded housing project on the city’s east side, near the church. When Walter moved away, she opened the bedroom to two youngsters who needed a home. “She took in others,” Walter Jackson said of his mother. “She was just that type of person.”4

  In a single flash of gun violence, Susie was one of three people snatched from her family. The other was twenty-six-year-old Tywanza Sanders, Susie Jackson’s nephew. He tried to save his aunt’s life, but was instead gunned down too. Sanders was a barber in North Charleston, an aspiring rapper and actor, poet, motivational speaker, and entrepreneur. In 2014, he earned a business administration degree from Allen University, an AME-supported, four-year institution in Columbia, South Carolina.

  A regular at Columbia’s open-mic poetry night, Mind Gravy, Sanders would skateboard down to the Five Points neighborhood almost every Wednesday night from the Allen campus. He was known for his humility and was well-liked and respected in poetry circles. Unlike many young people’s work, full of anger, his performance poems were always thoughtful. According to Mind Gravy director Al Black, “Tywanza was almost like a sixties poet” in terms of tone and subject matter.5

  The tall Sanders had a captivating smile that placed those around him at ease and snagged him a role in a play being rehearsed at a local Baptist church, recalled North Charleston cast member Nowa Fludd. Sanders had been teased by female members of the cast for not dating regularly. Playwright Hortense Mitchell, who recruited Sanders for her play Life, was surprised by his response. He didn’t want a relationship until he had something to offer.6

  Emanuel’s property committee was guided by its chairwoman, Myra Thompson. She was in the midst of restoring church-owned properties, and with a smaller project completed, her attention was turning to the structural needs of the church. The fifty-nine-year-old mother, retired schoolteacher, and p
astor’s wife had her license to preach in the AME Church renewed the night she died in her house of faith. As a teacher, Thompson worked up to the end in the church where she’d grown up. She led the Bible study session where a stranger among them was welcomed to sit and listen.

  Rev. Simmons may have been in the best position to stop the shooter. The veteran had a license to carry a gun, but the weapon was in his car. Simmons had returned decades before from Vietnam with a Purple Heart. Soon he entered another service, the ministry, and led three AME churches in the Mount Pleasant community east of Charleston. After three decades in those pulpits, he joined Emanuel’s ministerial staff, its spiritual heart. He was a regular at Bible study.

  Simmons was as tough as a drill sergeant though he had a smile that could be seen a mile away. He was born in Clarendon County, one of the counties that make up South Carolina’s impoverished stretch of communities along Interstate 95 dubbed the “Corridor of Shame.” He was a fourth-generation preacher. After serving in the US Army, Simmons graduated from Allen University and later earned master’s degrees in social work from the University of South Carolina and divinity from Lutheran Seminary. During the shooting, he was wounded, then rushed to the Medical University Hospital, where he died. He was the last of the victims to be laid to rest.

  Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor sang in the church choir and had preached at AME and Baptist churches in the Charleston area. This forty-nine-year-old mother of four girls had retired in 2005, as director of the Charleston County Community Development Block Grant Program. The year before her death, she had become an admissions coordinator for the Charleston learning center of Southern Wesleyan University.7 Middleton-Doctor’s best friend and kindred spirit, Jackie Starks, will never forget her friend’s voice. “So angelic it could move the very depth of your heart . . . How do you describe an angel?”8