First funerals held for church shooting victims
NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — A choir and band launched into one of Ethel Lance’s favorite gospel tunes and roused hundreds of mourners from their seats Thursday in a crescendo of music at the first funeral for victims of the massacre at a historic black church.
People stood to clap, nod and sway during the cathartic singing. An organ, drums and bass guitar provided the rhythm.
The service was fitting for the 70-year-old Charleston native with “an infectious smile,” who served with vigor as an officer at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the congregation’s interim pastor said.
“When it was time for the ushers to usher, she had the usher strut,” Rev. Norvel Goff said. “When Sister Lance praised the Lord, you had to strap on your spiritual seat belt.”
Despite pleas to withhold debate until after the funerals, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s call to remove the Confederate flag from in front of the Statehouse in response to the killings was reverberating around the South. Some officials have worried openly about a backlash as people take matters into their own hands.
“Black Lives Matter” was spray-painted on a monument to Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Richmond, Virginia, on Thursday. On Tuesday and Wednesday, black churches in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Macon, Georgia, were set afire.
But in Charleston, the early gestures of forgiveness by the victims’ families toward a shooting suspect who embraced the Confederate flag set a healing tone that has continued through a series of unity rallies, drawing thousands of people intent on leaving no room for racial hate.
“A hateful, disillusioned young man came into the church filled with hate ... and the reaction was love,” Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. said at the day’s second funeral, for Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45. “He came in with symbols of division. The Confederate battle flag is coming down off our state Capitol.”
Members of Coleman-Singleton’s Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority formed a ring around the large sanctuary as part of an Ivy Beyond the Wall ceremony before her service.
Funerals for the other victims were scheduled over the next week, including one today for Emanuel’s lead pastor, Rev. Clementa Pinckney, where President Barack Obama will deliver the eulogy.
A somber procession of mourners filed past Pinckney’s open casket during a viewing Thursday night at Emanuel. The state senator also had public viewing Thursday in Ridgeland, South Carolina.
Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton attended Coleman-Singleton’s service, and referred to Dylann Storm Roof, the 21-year-old white man facing nine murder charges.
Sharpton recalled how he spent the morning of June 17 watching Loretta Lynch be sworn in as the nation’s first black female attorney general.
“That morning, I saw how far we have come,” he said. “That night, I saw how far yet we have to go.”