Holy site’s long, storied history
THE SITE OF the Wednesday night massacre of nine black parishioners by a lone white gunman has a bloody history of resilience.
The Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., was founded in 1816 as a place for slaves and freed blacks to worship together.
Two years later, church organizer Morris Brown and other ministers there were jailed for the crime of having black “gatherings” without white supervision.
Another of the church’s founders, Denmark Vesey, plotted a slave rebellion in 1822.
Vesey — a carpenter who bought his freedom for $600 in 1799 after winning the lottery — was planning a major uprising in Charleston, but authorities found out about the scheme.
Word of the planned revolt set off mass hysteria in the South, and 313 people were arrested in the plot. Thirty-five, including Vesey, were executed.
The church was burned to the ground — but parishioners rebuilt it and continued to worship there, even after black churches were outlawed in the state in 1834.
The church was destroyed again in 1886 by an earthquake, but rebuilt and born again in 1892 at the site where it still stands.
It’s the oldest AME church in the South, and was placed on the National Registry of Historic Places in 1985.
Wednesday’s bloodshed came one day after the anniversary of Vesey’s planned rebellion.