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Black America Web
5 days ago
- Black America Web
Survivors Remember Emanuel AME Church Massacre Victims On 10th Anniversary
Source: Education Images / Getty On June 17, 2015, the lives of parishioners of the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, were forever changed. Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Cynthia Hurd, Ethel Lee Lance, the Rev. Depayne Middleton-Doctor, the Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr., Myra Thompson, Susie Jackson, and Tywanza Sanders were in a bible study with other members of the congregation, led by Rev. Clementa Pinckney. The group welcomed Dylann Roof, a then 21-year-old white man, into the church to join them in fellowship and prayer. Their kindness was met by a horrific act of violence when Roof drew a rifle and opened fire, tragically killing all nine people. Now, a decade later, the survivors are reflecting on the tragedy and remembering the loved ones they lost. Craig Melvin, of NBC's 'Today Show,' interviewed several of the families who were in the church that day and lost loved ones. Malana Pinckney was only six years old when the tragedy took place. Malana's father was Rev. Clementa Pinckney, one of the nine people murdered that day. Malana was in a study room with her mother, Jennifer Pinckney, who credits her daughter as the reason why she's still here with us today. 'By her coming and being with us, [it] kept me in the office,' Jennifer Pinckney told NBC. 'Because I knew, six years old, she was not going to sit in a Bible study. She was just going to be running around and wanting to talk, or wanting to eat a snack, or something. So I knew it was best, 'We're going to say in the pastor's study.' And that's why I'm here today, is because of her.' For the Pinckneys, Clementa has never been far from their thoughts. His memory has loomed large as the family has celebrated several milestones over the last year. 'Malana went to the prom, Eliana [their other daughter] graduated from college. It's just been like, 'Your father should've been here to witness and to be a part of all of this that's going on,'' Jennifer said. Source: Getty / Getty 'It is so hard to go through your life and not just let this tear me down for the rest of my life. I have so much that I have to live for, for my mom and for my dad,' Malana told NBC. Felicia Sanders, Tywanza's mother, told NBC that she still hasn't moved on from the tragedy. 'You don't,' Sanders said. 'You just have to do what you have to do. I feel sometimes like, even though Dylann Roof got sentenced, I feel like we got sentenced also.' Roof chose Emanuel AME Church in particular as it's a historically Black church, and he wanted to start a 'race war.' Roof was arrested the day after the shooting in Charleston and was eventually tried and given the death sentence. Despite the horrific, racially motivated nature of his crime, Roof's attorneys have continually tried to have his death sentence overturned. Sadly, in the ten years since the shooting, white supremacy has only become more pronounced, with the attitudes expressed by Roof making their way into mainstream politics. While there's been a decline in hate groups over the last year, that's largely due to the ideals they espouse being held or, at the very least, tolerated by elected officials and the public at large. We've seen this in the prolonged attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), the attempts to whitewash history at national museums, and a white woman actually raising substantial sums of money for calling a child the N-word. To drive home how much Roof's white supremacist ideals have become normalized, a GOP politician was actually upset with President Biden when he refused to commute Roof's death sentence. A memorial has been in progress at the Charleston Emanuel AME Church to honor the nine victims and is open for visitors to pay respects. It's easy to give in to despair when you look at how much America has given in to its worst impulses over the last decade. Yet, for the sake of those we've lost, we have to do our best to strengthen our sense of community and fight back against the incredibly dangerous and deadly forces of white supremacy. SEE ALSO: Dylann Roof Wants Death Sentence Overturned Emanuel AME Church To Build Victims Memorial SEE ALSO Survivors Remember Emanuel AME Church Massacre Victims On 10th Anniversary was originally published on Black America Web Featured Video CLOSE
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Yahoo
‘Evil, pure evil': Hatred, forgiveness, and honoring the victims of the Charleston church attack
Dylann Roof was on the run and easily the most wanted man anywhere after the events on June 17, 2015. Roof covered 245 miles from Charleston to Shelby after he killed nine people at Mother Emanuel church. It was thanks to a tip from a florist in Gastonia that he eventually saw police lights in his rear-view mirror. He was arrested without a fight, handcuffed, and taken into custody in a place known as the City of Pleasant Living 'I think everybody in Charleston was somewhat on edge because we didn't know,' said Herb Frazier, a historian in Charleston. 'So the capture of the shooter sort of released that tension and that anxiety, yeah, I did. I think Charleston took a collective exhale when that news broke." By the time he left the Shelby Police Department, there were cameras all over. 'We were watching the news and all of us were excited that he got caught,' said Kaylin Doctor-Stancil. Doctor-Stancil's mother, Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, was one of the nine victims killed in Mother Emanuel church that night. Roof was loaded onto a plane back to South Carolina. Charlotte city councilmember Malcolm Graham said he was glad someone was now charged with murdering his sister, Cynthia Hurd, and eight others. But that wasn't his primary focus. 'It was really not about him, right? It was really about, how do I bury my sister with a sense of grace and dignity? How do I be a voice for her? How do I make sure that my family is okay, right? How do I make sure that justice was served?' Graham said. As the world got a first look at the shooter, they began to learn why he opened fire at a Black church, a place where he had been welcomed. He had put in writing his wishes to drive people of different races apart -- to preserve his own race. 'All I could think of was evil, pure evil,' Doctor-Stancil said when she saw Roof's writings. 'The thing that surprised us about the suspect was that he was so young and and so we wondered, we, we, we wondered what could have motivated such a young man, and what experience might he have had to have filled him with that kind of murderous hatred?' said Dr. Bernard Powers, a historian in Charleston. More details emerged about Roof's extreme white supremacist views, yet family members of some victims said they could forgive him. They spoke just off camera during his hearing. 'I will never talk to her ever again. I will never, ever hold her again. But I forgive you,' said Ethel Lance's daughter. " I am a work in progress and I acknowledge I am very angry. But one thing is DePayne has always joined in, in our family with is that she taught me that we are the family that love built. We have no room for hate, so we have to forgive. And I pray God on your soul," said Bethene Middleton Brown. 'These statements of forgiveness were given, and of course, that took on a whole new round of how would I respond if that was one of my family members who was tragically, tragically gunned down in a church? Could I have the capacity to forgive?' said Frazier. Doctor-Stancil says she's still not forgiving Roof. 'That ruined our lives. My mom was our sole care provider. We didn't have anybody after that,' Doctor-Stancil said. 'So while the thing coming out of Charleston is that the families forgave; my family didn't. I didn't. I didn't then and I don't forgive today. How could you forgive 400 years of racism, of discrimination, of hatred? How could you forgive someone who asked for no forgiveness? How could you forgive the terror that he imposed upon those who were there that night, the terror that he was trying to impose against a race of people,' Graham said. They waited years for guilty verdicts in state and federal court. Roof received the death penalty. 'Was that a healing sentence for you?' Lemon asked. 'Yes, you know, it sucks that the death penalty will take a while before it is actually, you know, executed. But to know that that will be, you know, his future, it is a little healing to know that, like you know, to know you're not going to get out because you had a pardon,' Graham said. Graham says faith and healing go hand in hand, and in his view, justice only comes from eliminating the hate that causes so much pain. 'We're all in this together, right? It has to be. I mean, one is to accepting the changing demographics of our country. Our country is not about white men anymore. It's a quote, right? In Charleston, that's what we do. They got great quotes all over the city, right? There's patches, there's Black patches, there's white patches, Hispanic patches, Mexican practices, rich patches, there's poor patches, there's young, there's old. We're all in this together, and we will only succeed as a country unless we acknowledge that our strength is our diversity. Our strength is what moves us forward. And so yes, we all have to embrace that. If we don't, then we continue to run in this well-worn circle of trying to figuring out or having a puppeteer appear and say, hey, the magic answer is building a wall. The magic answer is kicking people out of the country. The magic answer is not talking about our past. The magic answer is getting rid of black and brown folks, right, erasing them from history, that dog just won't hunt. There's a better way forward by embracing our differences and encouraging people to talk about it and solve problems together,' Graham said. We asked the victims' loved ones one more question: knowing what you know now, what would you have told yourself in 2015? Malcolm Graham: 'Dear Malcolm, I am running to you from a place of understanding and compassion ... You've learned that while the pain never fully disappears. It could be transformed into a powerful force for change. You have discovered the strength that comes from community and the unyielding power of love and faith. These have been your anchors, guiding you through the darkest moments. He tried to demoralize, kill, extinct a race of people. He didn't do anything other than uplift those same individuals, right? Made sure that internationally and nationally, people knew who they were. Your voice matters and your actions can ignite change. Stand firm in your truth and continue to challenge the country to be better for us. Keep the faith, do the work. Malcolm.' Kaylin Doctor-Stancil: 'All right, dear Caitlin, You're about to get your driver's license, and you're anticipating your graduation gift from your mom. This joy and happiness, though it only lasts with you only a week before you get the news that your mother was killed. : I have found a support system with my lovely husband, Eric, who I met nine years ago. He's helped me through my rough days and my good days. He's helped me through all of those for the past nine years. And my children, Colby and Audrey, they give me joy and a reason to still seek happiness. Being able to tell them about her and share videos of her singing still brings me joy.' (VIDEO: Progress underway on memorial for victims of Charleston church shooting)
Boston Globe
12-06-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
‘Where was God?' The Mother Emanuel AME Church shooting 10 years later.
Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up This was quite remarkable, because less than 48 hours earlier, on the night of June 17, 2015, Sanders had just closed her eyes in benediction — during Bible study at her beloved Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church — when she was jolted by an explosion of gunfire. The 57-year-old woman, a fourth-generation member of 'Mother Emanuel,' the oldest A.M.E. church in the South, dove under a table and pulled her 11-year-old granddaughter down with her. She squeezed the child so tightly she feared she might crush her, instructing her to play dead as a 21-year-old white supremacist methodically assassinated nine of the 12 Black worshippers in the basement fellowship hall. Those she watched die included her 26-year-old son, Tywanza Sanders, who had tried vainly to distract the shooter, and her 87-year-old aunt, Susie Jackson, who was shredded by 10 hollow-point bullets. At one point, Sanders smeared her legs with the blood pooling at her feet so that the killer might think he had finished her off. It worked. What happened in court two days later, a procession of forgiveness by Black victims for a remorseless racist murderer, both awed and befuddled the world. Many found it to be the purest expression of Christianity they had ever witnessed and could not imagine ever being graced in any such way. With the help of a soaring and melodic eulogy for the victims by President Barack Obama, the church known as Mother Emanuel soon became an earthly emblem of amazing grace. FILE - Tyrone Sanders and Felicia Sanders comfort each other at the graveside of their son, Tywanza Sanders, on June 27, 2015, at Emanuel AME Cemetery in Charleston, S.C. (Grace Beahm/The Post And Courier via AP, File) Grace Beahm/Associated Press Now fast-forward to December 2016. Felicia Sanders is back in court, the lead witness in the death penalty trial of Dylann Roof. She is under cross-examination by Roof's attorney, who is trying to establish that Roof threatened to kill himself that night, a desperate stab at a psychiatric defense. This time there is no nod by Sanders at forgiveness, no prayer for the soul of her son's unrepentant executioner. 'He say he was going to kill himself, and I was counting on that,' Sanders responds coolly in her Lowcountry lilt, glaring at Roof from the stand. 'He's evil. There's no place on earth for him except for the pit of hell.' Roof's lawyer, blindsided, tries once more to prompt Sanders about Roof's suicidality. She is having none of it: 'Send himself back to the pit of hell, I say.' Had something changed about Felicia Sanders? Had she, in the 18 months between the Emanuel murders and the trial, forsaken the commitment to forgiveness that was such a hallmark of her faith and that had so moved the world? Not in the slightest, I concluded, while researching a book about the history of Mother Emanuel and the meaning of forgiveness in the African American church. To the contrary, Sanders and other church stalwarts helped me understand that the forgiveness expressed toward Dylann Roof had not been for Dylann Roof but rather for themselves. Those who appeared at Roof's bond hearing did not speak for everyone in the congregation, or even in their families. A decade later, some still describe the path to forgiveness as a journey they travel at their own pace. But the grace volunteered in June 2015 grew organically from the fiber of African Methodism, a denomination two centuries old. It obviously had deep scriptural roots — 'Forgive us our trespasses' and 'Forgive them, for they know not what they do.' But it also was an iteration of a timeworn survival mechanism that has helped African American Christians withstand enslavement, forced migration, captivity, indentured servitude, segregation, discrimination, denial of citizenship, and the constant threat of racial and sexual violence with their souls and their sanity still, somehow, intact. One year after the shootings at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., relatives and friends of the slain gathered to honor their lives. Grace Beahm/Associated Press Churches like Emanuel, which has roots in antebellum Charleston, have long served as physical and spiritual refuges from the scourges that confront Black Americans. Its own long history, a two-century cycle of suppression and resistance, illuminates the relentless afflictions of caste in the city where nearly half of all enslaved Africans disembarked in North America and where the Civil War began. Emanuel's predecessor congregation, which formed in 1817 after a subversive walkout from Methodist churches by free and enslaved Black Charlestonians, faced immediate harassment from white authorities. The police raided services and jailed worshippers by the scores. When an incipient slave insurrection plot was uncovered in 1822 and traced back in part to the church, 35 men were led to the gallows, nearly half of them from the congregation. The wood-frame building was dismantled by order of the authorities and the church's leading ministers forced into exile. Emanuel's founding pastor after the Civil War, Richard Harvey Cain, used its pulpit as a springboard into politics, winning seats in the state legislature and Congress in a career that mirrored at first the heady hope and then the stolen promise of Reconstruction. During the depths of Jim Crow, Charlestonians assembled at Emanuel to voice outrage over lynchings and jurisprudential travesties. Its civil rights era pastor, Benjamin J. Glover, also led Charleston's NAACP, staged peaceful protest marches from the church, and was repeatedly jailed. Congregants were urged to action there by Booker T. Washington (1909), W.E.B. DuBois (1921), and Martin Luther King Jr. (1962), and then, a year after King's assassination, by his widow, Coretta Scott King (1969). She came to support a hospital workers' strike that bore eerie echoes of the sanitation workers' strike that had drawn her husband to Memphis. Nearly five decades later, the first person shot by Dylann Roof on June 17, 2015, was the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, a remarkable prodigy who had been the youngest African American elected to South Carolina's legislature and was serving his fourth term in the state Senate. A horse-drawn carriage carried the casket of the late South Carolina State Senator Clementa Pinckney past the Confederate flag and onto the grounds of the South Carolina State Capitol in Columbia, S.C. on June 24, 2015. REUTERS The weight of it all takes the breath away. And for many, forgiveness might seem an inadequate response, given available options like anger, bitterness, hatred, revenge, retribution. A more natural one, perhaps a more human one, might even be 'Where was God?' But in interviews over the years, each of the six family members who spoke mercifully toward Dylann Roof explained that they did so for their own spiritual release. They depicted the moment in mystical terms — unpremeditated, unexpected, the words just flowed, it was God talking. But none said they meant for their words to be read as a grant of exoneration or a pass from accountability. No slate had been wiped. Indeed, some did not care much whether Roof lived or died (he remains on federal death row in Indiana, one of three inmates whose sentences were not commuted to life in prison by President Joe Biden at the close of his term). Rather, the mothers and children and widowers of the dead described their brand of forgiveness as a purging of self-destructive toxins, a means for reversing the metastasis of rage, and at its most basic a way to get out of bed each morning in the face of it all. It served as an unburdening, not an undoing, a method not only of moral practice but of emotional self-preservation. Because the choice to forgive was one dignity that could not be taken away, it also served as a path to empowerment. It might be mistaken for submission, but in Charleston it resurrected agency for victims who had been robbed of it. 'He is not a part of my life anymore,' the Rev. Anthony Thompson, the widower of Bible study leader Myra Thompson, told me in explaining his forgiveness of Roof. 'Forgiveness has freed me of that, of him, completely. I'm not going to make him a lifetime partner.' This may be disconcerting for some white Americans who found reassurance in the notion that those who forgave Dylann Roof were, by association, also forgiving — or at least moving beyond — the four-century legacy of white supremacy that contributed to his poisoning. They decidedly were not, and the question of whether we make serious progress toward eradicating the psychosis of race in this country and the inequities it bequeaths in wealth, education, housing, justice, and health, not to mention hope, awaits an answer on the 50th or 100th anniversary of the massacre at Mother Emanuel.
Fast Company
15-05-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
In Seattle, a group of friends wanted to live together—so they built their own apartment building
Around a decade ago, Chad Dale watched as some of his friends started to leave Seattle. 'They wanted to stay in an urban environment, but the city was too expensive for them to have all the things that they wanted to have,' Dale says. His friends who were beginning to have kids wanted backyards and guest rooms for visiting in-laws; they looked for single-family houses in the suburbs. But Dale, a developer, wondered whether there could be a different solution. What if he and several friends joined together to build their own apartment building—and all lived in the same place? Some friends had already bought a vacation home together on nearby Whidbey Island, and they liked the sense of community there. That house, with a single bathroom used by eight people, wasn't designed for communal living. But Dale realized that it would be possible to construct a new building based on the values that they shared. He and his wife, along with 10 other families—including two from the Whidbey Island project—started plotting what the development could look like. They decided to build apartments in a range of sizes, from 500 square feet to 2,000 square feet, based on what each family needed. They also wanted to include 24 units that could be rented out to others. And the development would be filled with shared space. When they found a lot for sale in Seattle's Phinney Ridge neighborhood, they also bought a full-size lot next door to use as a huge yard for all of their children. 'Everybody shares in the cost of that through rents,' Dale says. 'But more importantly, there's a betterment that happens because there are other kids there. You're not bummed that you're sharing, you're happy—the experience is improved.' The building, completed in 2023, has several other shared spaces that go beyond what a typical apartment building offers. A huge rooftop deck includes a large greenhouse with dining tables inside and a firepit outside. (The building, appropriately, is named Shared Roof.) There's a guest suite that residents can use for visitors. A soundproof room is designed for kids to practice drums or play in bands. An on-site gym goes beyond a standard shared fitness room to include the best equipment; the building financed that effort by renting the space to personal trainers, so it's used by the outside community as well as residents. Residents also share resources like tools. 'The goal is to live together and then determine what else we want to share,' says Dale. 'We've talked about everything from electric bikes to a pickup truck. If you use the pickup truck three times a year, it's not worth it. And it's annoying when you have to go rent from U-Haul. But if you have 35 groups using it three times a year, then maybe it makes sense.' The friends wanted to make the building as sustainable as possible, and it's now on track to get LEED Platinum certification, the highest rating from the green building platform. Solar panels mounted over the roof double as a canopy for the deck space. The building has heat pumps and ventilation systems that recover energy, along with energy-saving electric heat pump dryers. On the ground floor, Dale worked to find new businesses that would add to the neighborhood—a bakery, a tap room for a brewery, a wine shop, and an Italian restaurant. The retail space surrounds a courtyard that's open to the public. From the outside, it looks like a fairly standard apartment building. Inside, it's clearly different: The friends who invested in the project each made their own choices about how they wanted their own apartment to look. 'None of the units stack,' says David Fuchs, principal at Johnston Architects, which designed the building. 'They're all different shapes and sizes.' Inside, everyone got to choose from several different finishes, so the apartments are unique. The financial arrangement is also unique. 'We realized very early that if you're going to ask people who could otherwise be purchasing their own piece of property to live in an environment like this, then you also need to provide a way for them to be an investor, because oftentimes that's a significant component of their retirement income or of their nest egg,' Dale says. 'So we came up with the solution to allow folks to be investors as well as tenants.' They calculated that the return from the investment could potentially be similar to the return from owning and selling a single-family home. Three outside investors also joined the project without planning to live on-site. Each of the original families had the option to invest as much as they wanted in the project; the final investments ranged from $50,000 to millions. Because of that, it made sense to have the families pay market-rate rent and then separately earn investment income from the building. (Twenty percent of the other units are offered at a more affordable rate to moderate-income tenants, through a city program that offers a tax break to developers who include affordable apartments.) Initially, the concept was a tough sell to banks. 'When we started, I was so excited about the idea that I'd go out and tell everybody, 'Look, we've got this crazy idea where we're going to have tenants who are also owners,'' Dale says. 'And for the most part, I just got blank stares from the groups that I was trying to get financing from, like, 'What the hell are you talking about?'' He realized that he needed to explain it differently: An LLC owns the building, and the LLC has members, as in most apartment buildings. The difference is that some of the members are also tenants. Starting with a core group of longtime friends as tenants transformed the feeling of the building. 'The people who live here now treat each other wildly differently than in a typical apartment building,' he says. 'They treat the building differently. And then that all rubs off to the people who aren't [investors] as well. Walking around in this space, people are happier. They're engaged with each other.' Apartment living is underrated, Dale says. If someone wants social interaction, it's immediately available. If something breaks, the building manager can deal with it instead of the tenant. 'In the U.S., we've got a funny way of idolizing single-family homeownership,' he says. 'Apartment living is pretty incredible. In terms of function and livability, it's actually maybe the best way to live, particularly when you're in an environment where there are other people that you enjoy being around.'
The Citizen
14-05-2025
- Business
- The Citizen
Roof Builders: Quality roofing does not have to break the bank
Roof Builders: Quality roofing does not have to break the bank If you think a new steel roof will break the bank, it's time to think again. The North Coast's very own roofing specialists, Roof Builders, are on hand to offer expert service at competitive rates. Based in Shakaskraal, the steel roofing manufacturer and supplier is available to serve the North Coast and greater Durban areas. With experience in supplying custom steel roof sheeting and accessories, their team is passionate about offering durable, high-quality roofing solutions tailored for coastal conditions. Co-founders Lee Ramsden and Charlie Brown believe that there is a misconception about the affordability of quality roofing. 'In reality, for an average home of around 350m², the supply cost of new IBR roof sheeting in a mid-range colour-coated finish is about R60 000 ex. VAT,' said Ramsden. 'While installation, flashing and barge boards add to the total, the sheeting itself isn't as costly as most homeowners expect.' The team stresses the importance of regular roof maintenance, especially in coastal regions where salt, wind and moisture speed up deterioration. Neglected roofs often lead to full replacements when timely repairs could have extended their lifespan. Choosing the right materials, applying rust inhibitors to cut edges and ensuring proper installation with galvanised self-tapping screws are all essential steps to prolong the life of your roof. Roof Builders encourages homeowners to see their roofs as long-term investments in property protection, not just an expense. With local support, shorter lead times and custom product solutions, Roof Builders is available to guide you through every step – without the price shock. Stay in the loop with The North Coast Courier on Facebook, X, Instagram & YouTube for the latest news. Mobile users can join our WhatsApp Broadcast Service here or if you're on desktop, scan the QR code below. At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!
