Mourners recall Charleston church victims at service

People have been stopping by Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church leaving flowers and ribbons, and generally grieving one year to the day after nine parishioners were killed here.

The consequences of slavery are exposed through the systemic ways that Charleston’s black population remains disadvantaged, as well as through tragedies like the massacre at Mother Emanuel because of racial hatred.

It was a moving experience, led by President Barack Obama, and a proper tribute to Senator Pinckney, a man of much good, but, unfortunately, a man of even greater potential whose life was ended way too soon.

Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg read the names of the victims, describing them as “nine lovely souls”. “I’m proud of my father and the 8 other victims, and their lives, and what happened with them, and how it just brought everyone together”, Simmons said.

After the shooting in Charleston, I knew I needed to be part of the solution, to find a way to keep on dreaming – I needed to channel my pain into action. In less than a week since the Orlando tragedy, more than 16,000 Americans have called their members of Congress and more than 60,000 people have signed a petition demanding more from our elected leaders.

“There hasn’t been a day since June 17, 2015, that haven’t thought a”, Haley said, referring also to the three who were injured, according to the Associated Press.

Rev. Betty Deas Clark at Emanuel AME said that forgiveness gives them the strength to move forward. “The governor took down the flag but still won’t support meaningful gun control legislation”.

“It’s a shared responsibility”, Clark said. “We’re all standing together for this”.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) showed the programs from nine funerals she has kept since last summer, and she spoke about faith and each victim.

Toby Smith says she still ponders how Roof, then 21, could have shot the worshippers after having just spent an hour talking and praying with them. It makes a person feel very pointedly less safe than the average person living in the U.S.; on top of being an already oppressed other, they now must contend with a higher profile of violence and scrutiny that leaves them more exposed. She said mass shootings have left her afraid and unnerved.

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) – Amid singing and prayer, a communitywide memorial service remembering the victims of the Charleston church shootings got underway Friday in a sports arena a few blocks from Emanuel AME Church. Angry at the church for keeping some of the more than $3 million in donations it received rather than distributing it all to the survivors and victims’ families. “We look to Mother Emanuel for inspiration in the wake of Orlando”, she said.

I will never, ever hold her again. Roof will go on trial in November on federal hate crime charges that could result in a death sentence before facing state murder charges in January.

The events were made even more poignant coming less than a week after a gunman slaughtered 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, marking the largest of many mass shootings in modern US history.