by Herb Frazier
The post–Civil War years, and the unprecedented educational opportunities they afforded, produced significant numbers of ministers in South Carolina who could claim professional training for the first time, and these men assumed important leadership roles in their communities. In all of the nineteenth century, none was more significant than Richard H. Cain because of the myriad roles he played and the energy he brought to each. While pastor at Emanuel he also purchased additional property in Charleston and organized Morris Brown Church there. Although approximately half the size of Emanuel in the 1880s, it was also considered a “first class” congregation. In supervising the work of the church, Cain was personally responsible for establishing numerous other congregations along the coast north and south of Charleston as well as in the interior.27
Cain’s commitment to African Methodism and his black nationalism were mutually reinforcing, and he used a variety of means to promote the interests of black Carolinians. For example, at an early date he understood that the people he served needed to have a black-controlled newspaper that valued them and fairly represented their interests. In 1866, he purchased the South Carolina Leader, which he renamed the Missionary Record; Cain served as its editor and published it until the early 1870s. The newspaper’s masthead described it as the “organ of the Colored People and exponent of their views and desires.” Within its pages the reader could find the latest information in the areas of literature and the arts, politics, and science, and it routinely contained the latest information on AME activities. This was the first such publishing venture controlled by African Americans in South Carolina.28
Not surprisingly in this time when African American men were beginning to receive their full rights as citizens, a number went into politics. With a 60 percent black majority, South Carolina was potentially a fruitful field for men with political ambitions, and between 1868 and 1877 black men dominated the lower house of the state legislature.29 From an early date Cain was involved in state and local politics as another means of promoting the interests of black Carolinians. In 1867, he participated in a series of meetings that organized the Republican Party in the state. He was later elected to the January 1868 South Carolina Constitutional Convention, where he played an important role protecting the freedmen’s voting rights, promoting public education, and the acquisition of land by small farmers. In 1868, Cain was elected to the state senate, where he vigorously and successfully promoted the creation of a state land commission to help freedmen and other small farmers purchase their own land and avoid the exploitative sharecropping system.30 He also purchased more than five hundred acres of land about twenty-five miles north of Charleston and sold lots to African Americans. These initial sales were the basis for the settlement of Lincolnville, which Cain planned to become an all-black town in which the residents could show their capacity for discipline, order, and prosperity. Finally Richard Cain was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1873–75 and 1877–79; while there he worked with other Republicans to pass the country’s first federal public accommodations law.31 Without question Cain established a high bar for achievement, and to this day his record of accomplishment is unsurpassed among African Methodist clerics. More importantly, it served as an inspiration for many of those pastors who followed him at Emanuel.
Anyone who knew Clementa Pinckney knew of his love for history—particularly for the history of Mother Emanuel. He could go on for hours talking about events from days gone by that had occurred at his beloved church or in the surrounding community. He was a pastor who drew strength and inspiration from that history. In this way he resembled Richard Cain. On one occasion in 2013, he welcomed a group of doctoral students to the church with a prayer. In part he said, “God, we welcome and invite you into this place, your house. We thank you for the spirit that dwells here, the spirit of Denmark Vesey. The spirit of R. H. Cain. The spirit of Dr. King. The spirit of many of the unsung heroes of our people.” He called the ground upon which they sat, sacred, and he went on to discuss the vital roles Richard Allen, Morris Brown, and Denmark Vesey had played in the history of the denomination and in the history of Emanuel.32
Despite being pastor of such a storied church—and he reveled in it—Pinckney was quick to tell people that Emanuel was not a museum but was still a place “where we can hopefully work on the hearts and minds and spirits of all people.”33 As a pastor he nurtured and taught his members but understood that the church’s mission only began with the congregation. He believed, like Cain before him, that all Christians were responsible for transforming the communities in which they lived according to godly precepts. These ideas were rooted in biblical principles and the traditions of his church, and they were the reasons public service was such a crucial extension of Pinckney’s ministry. He entered politics to become the senator for the southern region of the state around Jasper County, an area that lagged behind the state in development and overall measures of well-being. He promoted bills that sought to empower people. Thus he vigorously opposed restrictive voter ID laws, championed wage increases for hospitality workers, supported Medicaid extension, and he fought hard for a port development project to bring jobs so sorely needed in Jasper County. More recently he played a pivotal role in passing the law that now requires the police in South Carolina to wear body cameras. This reform measure resulted from the April 2015 killing of Walter Scott, an unarmed African American, by a white police officer in North Charleston. Standing up for such a policy in the senate, in the cordial yet firm way he did it, demonstrates why Clementa Pinckney was long known as the “moral conscience” of the general assembly.34
Taking stands on the issues that he felt deeply about was what it meant to be African Methodist. According to Pinckney, this church stands for a “universal vision of all people being treated fairly under the law as God sees us in his sight.”35 But doing so had its costs, and Pinckney was aware of this also. On one occasion he informed a group of visitors to Emanuel’s sanctuary that to promote God’s vision for humanity, “sometimes you got to make noise to do that. Sometimes you may even have to die, like Denmark Vesey, to do that. Sometimes you have to march, struggle, and be unpopular to do that.”36 Little did we know how soon he would pay such a price, and the kind of challenge his death and that of the others would pose for the church, its community, and the nation.
But Emanuel had seen challenges before. Like the denomination of which it is a part, its entire history was punctuated with challenges met and surmounted. In Emanuel’s case an important historical example began on August 31, 1886. At approximately 9:50 p.m., Charleston and the surrounding areas were struck by the most severe earthquake ever recorded along America’s Eastern Seaboard. Those who have studied it claim it was more powerful than the 1989 earthquake that destroyed the Oakland freeway or the 2010 Haitian quake in which hundreds of thousands of people perished.37 In the Charleston area the effects were horrifying. One observer in the nearby town of Summerville reported that “without a moment’s notice a sudden trembling shook the earth.” It seemed as though “a thousand tons of powder had been buried beneath and was forcing its way out from its concealed cavern. Then a noise followed as though a subterranean cannonading had taken place. Houses were falling, chimneys were tumbling down, water spouting out of the earth, [and] streets becoming flooded,” as shrieking people witnessed “terra firma . . . passing us down to terra incognita.”38 The situation must have been even more frightening in Charleston, with its denser population and built environment; the damage was so extensive the city was crippled for weeks. The religious community was particularly hard hit; one resident reported that “nearly every church in the city is damaged more or less.” Of the three major AME churches in the city, Emanuel seemed to have sustained the most physical damage. A newspaper reporter who visited the church concluded it was “seriously damaged,” with fallen plaster and a listing western wall, and that the organ had been knocked out of place and was “heavily damaged.” According to L. R. Nichols, Emanuel�
��s pastor, an inspection of the church revealed about $2,800 in necessary repairs.39 Over the next several weeks some of Charleston’s AME ministers used the columns of their national newspaper, the Christian Recorder, or traveled to locations as far away as New York to appeal for funds to repair their buildings.40
The plight of the city quickly became a national news story as detailed coverage of the mammoth earthquake made the pages of newspapers from coast to coast. The American people also showed their generosity then, just as they did in the days, weeks, and months following the mass shooting at Emanuel Church in the summer of 2015. Contributions to the relief efforts poured into the city as people from around the nation extended credit, pledged relief-related services, and made monetary contributions ranging from under one hundred dollars to thousands of dollars. The Charleston News and Courier acknowledged this sense of unity with Charleston in a series of news stories with titles such as: “The Whole World Kin,” “Universal Sympathy with Charleston in Her Great Calamity,” and “All Hearts Beat as One.”41
The support from near and far was still insufficient to address Charleston’s immediate, enormous needs. With their homes and businesses destroyed, and the extensive aftershocks that followed the initial quake, fearful residents were thrown out into the elements to seek shelter: a series of tent camps sprang up in the city’s numerous parks, squares, and vacant lots. Some of the tents, such as those located on White Point Garden in the city’s most affluent neighborhood, were made of heavy-duty materials and even had covered floors. Far from typical, these tents were occupied solely or overwhelmingly by whites. More often than not, black Charlestonians gathered whatever scrap materials they could find—such as tin, old rugs, and bedsheets—in the wreckage on the streets, to assemble makeshift tents that provided varying degrees of shelter; when it rained the inhabitants had little real protection. Eventually regular tents were made available, and the city constructed some wooden sheds for residents, but the process was slow and uneven, which meant that many—particularly black Charlestonians—were left to fend for themselves.42
The set of circumstances the earthquake created had significant implications for the city’s race relations, particularly when competition over scarce resources led to physical and cultural collisions between Charleston’s black and white populations. Of the tent cities that arose after the earthquake, some housed either black or white residents while others included the two groups in the same general area. In the heart of downtown, Washington Square was a racial transition zone. During a September stroll around the city, an observer noted that the previous week whites had sought refuge there but that now “the colored people have taken entire possession of this square” after having “driven” the whites away. White Charlestonians were not physically driven off, but they found African Americans’ exuberant religious services—which lasted well into the evening—intolerable and, therefore, abandoned the square. This criticism of African American religiosity was common in the city: A. Toomer Porter, a well-known white Episcopal minister, sternly directed blacks to refrain from “the loud howling, singing and praying . . . in the streets” by which they disturbed the city’s peace.43 These cultural differences contributed to rising tensions between blacks and whites as they were forced into the same public spaces.
The way the relief effort was managed was also a source of racial tension. When Mayor William Courtenay created an executive relief committee to decide how the city could best alleviate the suffering and disorder following the earthquake, all his appointees were white businessmen, and many were former Confederate veterans. This, coupled with the fact that certain African American tent settlements, such as those in Washington Square, never received the city services available to whites elsewhere, led black Charlestonians to question the fairness of the administration. That’s why a letter to the New York Freeman, critical of Charleston’s relief efforts, charged that “colored people are the greatest sufferers. All money is in the hands of white men.”44
Black ministers took a leading role in trying to correct this situation. William Heard of Mt. Zion AME Church, L. R. Nichols of Emanuel, and others organized a committee to publicize the plight of their people to the country and to solicit funds nationally for their relief. This initiative won only scorn and criticism from whites who accused them of what is in today’s vernacular called “playing the race card.” A. Toomer Porter publicly entreated these black clerics against voicing any questions about race. Francis Dawson, editor of the Charleston News and Courier, responded to these ministers by denying that any discrimination existed in the provision of relief. He also went on to say that the charges they leveled were damaging because they suggested that blacks were neglected by city authorities, when according to Dawson, they had actually received more and better housing than whites.45 The weight of black criticism would eventually bear fruit when the city finally decided to employ black canvassers for each of the city wards who were responsible for identifying those in need and referring them to the city’s relief committee for action. Even so, complete authority for decision making on matters of relief remained solely in the hands of white men, and for the duration of the crisis, black men were never appointed to the city’s relief committee.46
The committee’s composition was a testament to the ironclad rule of white supremacy, which (although penetrated briefly after the Civil War) remained firmly intact at the end of the century. In fact, the years following the earthquake witnessed a steady deterioration in race relations across the nation and in South Carolina as disenfranchisement, racially inspired violence, and the rise of Jim Crow, or the system of legally established racial separation, further marginalized African Americans. Emanuel Church, however, would be a strong refuge against these outrages. Like the proverbial phoenix, it had risen from its antebellum ashes, and now, most recently, it had even withstood some of the earth’s most violent forces. The memories and inherited knowledge of this history and the values embedded within it represented a powerful bequest, preparing those who availed themselves of it for their own challenges.
EIGHT
JIM CROW
Within days of the murders at Emanuel, two historic monuments were defaced in Charleston. One, located more than a mile away on the Battery across the harbor from Fort Sumter, was a tribute to the “Confederate Defenders of Charleston.” The other—the tallest figurative statue in the city at eighty feet—is one-half block west of the church and directly across Marion Square from the Old Citadel; it immortalizes John C. Calhoun. The statue symbolizes virtually everything that is antithetical to Mother Emanuel, but it would be a touchstone for anyone driven by racial hatred.
According to one of Charleston’s late-nineteenth-century newspaper editors, Calhoun was considered “a great statesman” and “the most eminent man South Carolina has ever produced.”1 Over the course of his career, Calhoun served as secretaries of war and state, vice president, and as a US senator. He was also known as one of the most ardent defenders of states’ rights and of the institution of slavery. The original inscription on the monument to Calhoun reads, “Truth Justice and the Constitution,” to which someone added in bold red spray paint And Slavery; also the painted base read “Calhoun, Racist.”2 The identity of the vandals remains unknown, and in today’s atmosphere of social awareness, there is little reason to assume that the vandals were black rather than white. Historically, though, it was much different because black Charlestonians showed a general contempt for Calhoun, who, in their experience and memories, represented the state’s most virulently oppressive forces. That animosity continued long after Calhoun was dead since his rise to greater visibility in the cityscape also corresponded with increasing difficulty in the lives of blacks.
John Calhoun died in 1850; an elaborate funeral procession through the streets of the city marked the occasion. After his death, Boundary Street, the most important thoroughfare in the northern part of the city, was renamed Calhoun. In the decade before the Civil War, intersectional tension
between North and South reached a fever pitch and Southern whites felt the need to surveil the slave population more carefully to guard against abolitionist influence and the possibility of rebellion. Times also became more difficult for free blacks because they were increasingly viewed as misfits in a society that proclaimed slavery the best of all possible statuses for people of African descent. In the final years of the decade, there were debates in South Carolina and throughout the South over whether the free black population ought to be expelled or enslaved. Rather than wait to see the outcome, many free black Carolinians fled the state for the North.3
