“It happened to us too”, she said.
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Hymns have included “Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow”, “Lift Every Voice and Sing”, “Sweet Hour of Prayer” and “The Old Ship of Zion”.
In Charleston it’s a time to reflect and a time to remember. Although Clark didn’t join the church until after the shooting, she knew some of the victims personally.
It has been 366 days since the Emanuel Nine lost their lives on June 17, 2015. She says for most Charleston residents, Friday is simply an anniversary.
“It has now opened the dialogue for larger well-meaning, thinking people to see that, wait, there are individuals who really systematically have a problem with black people by virtue of the fact that they’re black”, said the Rev. Kylon Middleton, pastor of Mount Zion AME Church in Charleston, to NPR.
Melissa Rogers, special assistant to President Barack Obama, delivered a message from the White House during the event, saying, “We look to Mother Emanuel for inspiration in the wake of Orlando”.
Safety was provided by local law enforcement, such as Charleston Police and the sheriff’s office, as well as state and federal agencies like the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, and even the Secret Service. “And I didn’t know how we were going to recover from that”, Haley said of the immediate aftermath of the shooting. The suspect, Roof, had appeared in photos with the Confederate flag.
Speakers at Friday’s service also took the time to recognize the victims of the Orlando shooting, and even those in that deadly attack in San Bernadino. Hate sharpens its focus on one’s psyche beyond the abstract dread of being caught up in the random gunfire of a mass shooter, and pinpoints one’s specific marginalized community, that sacred place where one calls home in a world that detests one’s existence. The stage was lined with the pictures of the nine people killed.
Dylann Roof is charged with federal hate crimes in the shooting, and prosecutors will seek the death penalty when his trial begins November 7. Above each were the words “Still Speaking from Eternity”.
(AP Photo/Chuck Burton). Memorials are shown in front of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., Thursday, June 16, 2016.
And just one year ago, our nation recoiled in horror after a deluded young man, also filled with senseless hate, killed nine parishioners at weekly bible study at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
To mark the first anniversary of the Charleston church shooting, many media outlets have met with family members and other community members. She attended counseling sessions with several people traumatized by Sunday morning’s massacre at the Pulse nightclub.
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President Obama gave the eulogy at Pinckney’s funeral and led the thousands of attendees in a rendition of “Amazing Grace”.
