Charleston mourns shooting victims

Three services were held at the church where a gunman killed nine people.

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Funerals for three victims of a deadly shooting during a Bible study in South Carolina were held Saturday at the church where they were slain.

Services were first held for Cynthia Hurd, 54, at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, more than a week after a gunman entered the church and killed her and eight other people — all African-Americans. Police contend the attack was ra- cially motived.

Hurd, a longtime Charleston librarian, was remembered as a tireless public servant and loving family member, speakers at her funeral said. Attendees included South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, U.S. Sen. Tim Scott and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

“Her death will lead to change, and Cynthia Hurd will be helping millions,” Charleston Mayor Joe Riley said during a eulogy.

Riley remembered Hurd as a young girl serving ice cream. She went from serving people ice cream, he said, “to leading them to knowledge” as a librarian for al- most 30 years.

The killings will go down in history with other episodes of church violence, Riley said, referencing the civil rights-era bombing of a Baptist church in Alabama that killed four girls.

The tragedy “shook an America that didn’t want to believe this kind of hate could still exist,” Riley said.

Jackson said it is “really time for a new South.”

“This was the most traumatic hit since Dr. Martin Luther King was killed 50 years ago. This could be a defining moment for the American Dream for all its people,” Jackson said. “This is a resurrection. Look around, there are white and black people together.”

Funerals for Tywanza Sanders, 26, and Susie Jackson, 87, also took place at the church. At those funerals, Haley said the deadly attack happened on her watch and promised she would “make it right.”

The governor gave no specifics on what action she planned to take.

According to a pamphlet given at the funeral, Sanders died trying to protect Jackson, his aunt, and Felicia Sanders, his mother who survived the shooting.

The funerals followed the one Friday for the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, whose eulogy was delivered by President Barack Obama. Obama sang a hymn of hope and spoke with the fervor of a preacher as he eulogized Pinckney.