Healing starts in Charleston
MOURNERS GATHER AT CHURCH AFTER SHOOTING
CHARLESTON: Hundreds of people flocked to Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston yesterday as it reopened its doors to worshippers just days after a gunman shot dead nine black church members.
Outside the church, the oldest African-American congregation in the southern US, bouquets, teddy bears and balloons covered the pavement, while hundreds of people lined up to mourn, sing hymns and leave memorials.
Thousands of handwritten messages covered white banners at the church’s entrance, reading “God Bless” or “Thank you, Rev Clementa Pinckney. You will 4ever be an inspiration”, referring to the church’s pastor, a state senator who was one of the victims.
City officials, religious leaders and mourners said the services would mark a small step towards healing after the latest US mass shooting, which has again trained a spotlight on the nation’s pervasive and divisive issues of race relations and gun crime.
Dylann Roof, the 21-yearold suspect, remains in jail and charged with nine counts of murder. Authorities say he spent an hour in an evening Bible study group at the church, nicknamed “Mother Emanuel” for its key role in African-American history, before opening fire on Wednesday night.
Federal investigators were examining photos and white supremacist writings that surfaced on a website on Saturday that appeared to show Roof posing with a handgun and standing in front of a Confederate military museum and plantation slave houses.
Texts posted on the website included an “explanation” by the author for taking some unspecified action.
“I have no choice… I chose Charleston because it is (the) most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country,” it said.
Outside Emanuel church security was tight as police patrolled with a bomb dog to sniff through the growing piles of flowers, balloons, toys and signs. Below the church programme board, a poster covered in pink and white hearts and silver stars read, “We are all in this together & we will shine on”. A picture of multicoloured hands marked the middle of the card.
Monte Talmadge, a 63-yearold US Navy veteran, drove nearly 480km from Raleigh, North Carolina, to offer his condolences.
“A church is a place of worship, not for killing,” he said.
EVEN in America, a country by now inured to mass killings, the shooting rampage in which nine people died in a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, has come as a particular shock.
Irrespective of Dylann Roof ’s motives, one thing is certain; they will do nothing to improve the deteriorating state of race relations in the US.
The suspect, a 21-year-old white man, apparently targeted a Bible study class in what is by every appearance a classic example of a hate crime. He seems to have spent up to an hour in the church before carrying out the killings, but until he is fully interrogated much will remain unclear about these horrific events.
Perhaps the most concerning is what it says about the state of race relations in a country historically lauded as the “Land of the Free”.
News over the last few months has appeared to be predominantly of hate crimes and naked racism, bizarrely in a country which appeared to have exorcised some of its ancient racial demons by electing its first black president.
How different the future seemed six years ago. During his 2008 campaign, Obama spoke with unprecedented frankness about race. But no new dawn broke. As he showed by his reluctance to visit Ferguson and Baltimore, the president gives the impression his direct intervention might only make matters worse. Other factors, of course, are at work. The obscene proliferation of guns only magnifies tragedies like that at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
The reality, though, is that black Americans are still worse off than white Americans. They earn less and their opportunities for advancement are far fewer. Unemployment is double. There are more African-Americans in jail.
Segregation is outlawed, but unofficially persists in the residential patterns of many US cities such as Baltimore. Most depressing is how history repeats itself. For all the advances, the problem will not go away. In 1968, after race riots swept many cities, a presidential commission concluded the US was moving towards two societies, separate and unequal.
That judgment of almost half a century ago contains more than a grain of truth today.