The mass murder of nine people who gathered Wednesday night for Bible study at a landmark black church has shaken a city whose history from slavery to the Civil War to the present is inseparable from the nation’s anguished struggle with race.
Fourteen hours after the massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, in which the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, the church pastor and a prominent state senator, was among the dead, the police in Shelby, N.C., acting on a tip from a motorist, on Thursday arrested Dylann Storm Roof, a 21-year-old white man with an unsettled personal life and a recent history of anti-black views.
The killings, with victims ranging in age from 26 to 87, left people stunned and grieving. Witnesses said Mr. Roof sat with church members for an hour and then started venting against African-Americans and opened fire on the group.
At Morris Brown A.M.E. Church here, blacks, whites, Christians and Jews gathered to proclaim that a racist gunman would not divide a community already tested by the fatal police shooting in April of an unarmed African-American, Walter Scott. Continue reading the main story Slide Show
“We cannot make sense of what has happened, but we can come together,” declared the Rev. George Felder Jr., pastor of New Hope A.M.E. Church.
Gov. Nikki R. Haley fought back tears, her voice trembling and cracking, at a news conference here. “We woke up today, and the heart and soul of South Carolina was broken,” she said. “Parents are having to explain to their kids how they can go to church and feel safe, and that is not something we ever thought we’d deal with.” President Obama, once again having to confront the nation’s divisions, saw systemic issues of guns, violence and race in the tragedy in Charleston.
“We don’t have all the facts, but we do know that, once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun,” he said at the White House.
And quoting the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. after four black girls were killed in the bombing of a black church in Birmingham, Ala., 52 years ago, he said the lessons of this tragedy must extend beyond one city and one church. He cited Dr. King’s words that their deaths were a demand to “substitute courage for caution,” and urging people to ask not just who did the killing but “about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers.” Continue reading the main story
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| Church Massacre Suspect Held as Charleston Grieves |
The killings, with victims ranging in age from 26 to 87, left people stunned and grieving. Witnesses said Mr. Roof sat with church members for an hour and then started venting against African-Americans and opened fire on the group.
At Morris Brown A.M.E. Church here, blacks, whites, Christians and Jews gathered to proclaim that a racist gunman would not divide a community already tested by the fatal police shooting in April of an unarmed African-American, Walter Scott. Continue reading the main story Slide Show
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| CreditTravis Dove for The New York Times |
Gov. Nikki R. Haley fought back tears, her voice trembling and cracking, at a news conference here. “We woke up today, and the heart and soul of South Carolina was broken,” she said. “Parents are having to explain to their kids how they can go to church and feel safe, and that is not something we ever thought we’d deal with.” President Obama, once again having to confront the nation’s divisions, saw systemic issues of guns, violence and race in the tragedy in Charleston.
“We don’t have all the facts, but we do know that, once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun,” he said at the White House.
And quoting the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. after four black girls were killed in the bombing of a black church in Birmingham, Ala., 52 years ago, he said the lessons of this tragedy must extend beyond one city and one church. He cited Dr. King’s words that their deaths were a demand to “substitute courage for caution,” and urging people to ask not just who did the killing but “about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers.” Continue reading the main story
