A6 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, MAY 24 , 2022
at what they see as a rise in racism
and of racist attacks on people of
color. They faulted the Internet for
helping to spread racist ideas.
They expressed particular disgust
with elected officials in South
Carolina, who cried and prayed
with them after the killings.
“The laws haven’t changed
since then,” said Clifford Jones, 62,
a retired Army staff sergeant and
Veterans Affairs worker. “No hate
crime bills have been passed. You
have to do more than show up. If
you’re a politician, you’re sup-
posed to support the people.”
“Of course, politicians turn up,”
said retired attorney Willi Glee, 81.
Like Dennis, Glee left the church
mere hours before the shooting in
2015, going to a Ruby Tuesday res-
taurant. He still remembers what he
ate: shrimp, string beans and
mashed potatoes. “People are tired of
hearing ‘sorry for their loss.’ Are they
really sorry or just paying lip service?
I don’t see results on the ground.”
Manning said communities
traumatized by racist violence
need more from political leaders
than displays of “false grief.”
“From a Black perspective and
pastoring Mother Emanuel, I un-
derstand the whole aspect of for-
giveness,” Manning said. “But at
the same token, forgiveness never
negates the reality of justice.”
Members of Mother Emmanuel
noted another similarity between
Buffalo and the shooting at their
church: Law enforcement author-
ities took both Gendron and Roof
into custody without physically
harming them. That night at 3
a.m., Manning said, he pondered
that treatment. He noted reports
that Gendron emerged from the
grocery store holding a gun to his
neck. He couldn’t imagine that a
Black man could emerge from an
active shooting scene, still armed,
and not be shot dead by police.
“There are two forms of justice,
one that is given for Black and brown
citizens and one that is given to
Whites,” Manning said at the church.
Glee interjected: “There are two
forms of justice, justice and injus-
tice. White people get justice and
Black people get injustice for the
most part.”
For some, last weekend’s shoot-
ing has reignited the fear of being
targeted again by a White racist
armed with a gun. They are more
aware of their surroundings, identi-
fying the exits wherever they go. One
member said he lives with a con-
stant feeling of “heightened alert.”
“Even now, I come to church, one
Sunday a young White man sat
behind me. I was so uneasy. I
couldn’t focus on Rev. Manning’ssermon. There are still things that
spook us as a result of this,” said
Lois Gethers, 77, who had gone with
Glee to the restaurant that night in
2015.
“A lot of Roof’s followers are
trying to continue what he start-
ed,” Jones said, referring to the
threats the church still receives.
Jones said the Black community in
Buffalo needs to “be ready” for
additional threats from those who
now see Glendron as a hero.
The Buffalo shootings reminded
Glee of the work that needed to be
done with younger generations.
“When I was a young man I thought,
by the time I became an old man,
most of this stuff would have gone
away,” said Glee. “We thought it
would have been better. Now we
have radicalized 18- and 20-year-
olds. I thought the Strom Thur-
monds, Bull Connors and George
Wallaces would have gone away. But
now they are being replaced by
young men who are worse than they
were.”
Manning encouraged his mem-
bers to study Psalm 37: “Fret not
yourself because of evil doers, be
not envious of wrongdoers, for
they will soon fade like the grass
and wither like the green herb.
Trust in the Lord and do good.”
But he has not tried to steer
them away from their emotions.
“You have a right to be angry,” he
said in an interview recently.
“You’re the one who’s got to sit
across from that empty seat at the
dining room table day by day,
week by week, at holidays and
other significant other times. And
it’s going to be empty because of an
act of hatred.”
Next month the church will
hold its annual “Emanuel Nine”
commemoration. Over nine days,
the family of each slain member
will be honored.
Manning said he plans to go up
to Buffalo next week to offer help,
and that he’ll encourage the com-
munities there and in Charleston
permission to embrace what they
feel in this moment. But he also
will remind them to have hope.
“I am hopeful. I mean, you always
have to have a glimmer of hope. You
cannot give in to complete despair,”
he said. He takes solace in knowing
that he can remind people — who-
ever will listen — that they have a
higher calling to answer.
“The question is, are they going
to do the heavy lifting that that’s
required or are they going to take
the easy way out? And I believe for
so long we have been taking the
easy way out that we no longer
want to do the heavy lifting of
trying to find common ground.”BY KEITH L. ALEXANDER
AND VANESSA WILLIAMScharleston, s.c. — A few days
ago, at 3 o’clock in the morning,
the Rev. Eric S.C. Manning found
himself thinking about how last
weekend’s massacre in Buffalo
mirrored the one at his church.
A young man, a self-described
white supremacist, armed with a
gun, drove miles out of his way to
seek out and kill Black people.
In June 2015, nine Black men and
women, members of historic Mother
Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charles-
ton were murdered in June 2015 by a
White man, then 21 years old, who
had prayed with him during their
Wednesday night Bible study.
Last Saturday afternoon, 1 0
Black men and women were shot
to death at a neighborhood super-
market. Payton Gendron, 18, who
has been charged with first-degree
murder in the Buffalo slayings,
railed online about a conspiracy to
“replace” White people and de-
tailed his plans to target a Black
neighborhood. The document also
references Dylann Roof, later con-
victed of killing the Black men and
women in the church basement,
who talked of starting a “race war.”
“In June, it’ll be seven years since
the massacre at Mother Emanuel,”
Manning, who became pastor of the
church one year and five days after
the attack, said during a recent inter-
view. “People would have thought
that we would be in a better place.”
When Carlotta Dennis, a retired
English teacher, heard about the
carnage in Buffalo, her mind “went
right back to that, the thought of
what happened that night,” she
said. “The tragedy, the horror.”
Dennis, 69, had been at Mother
Emmanuel earlier that evening in
June 2015, serving as recording sec-
retary for a meeting attended by 61
members. Most left afterward, but
about a dozen members stayed be-
hind for Bible study. Hours later,
church members’ cellphones be-
gan ringing as family and friends
frantically called to check on them.
Roof killed the Rev. Clementa C.
Pinckney, 41; the Rev. Sharonda
Coleman-Singleton, 45; the Rev.
DePayne Middleton-Doctor, 49;
the Rev. Daniel Simmons, 74; Cyn-
thia Hurd, 54; Susie Jackson, 87;
Myra Thompson, 59; Ethel Lance,
70; and Tywanza Sanders, 26.
State Rep. JA Moore is the young-
er brother of Myra Thompson. News
of the Buffalo slayings, so close to the
anniversary of her murder, exacer-
bated the pain for his family, he says.
Just a day earlier, the South Carolina
state senate had ended its session
without taking a vote on a hate
crimes bill named in honor of Pinck-
ney, who had been a senator.
Moore, who cites his sister’s
murder as the reason he ran for
public office, is incensed that the
bill did not pass. According to
news reports, two of the Republi-
cans who declined to support the
bill, state Sens. Brian Adams and
Larry Grooms, represent the dis-
trict in which Mother Emanuel is
located. Adams did not respond to
a request for comment; Grooms
could not be immediately reached.
“The frustration is incomprehen-
sible,” he said in a telephone inter-
view. The legislation is “not going to
prevent white supremacy or domes-
tic terrorism or hateful acts,” Moore
acknowledged. “But sometimes, as
my grandmother always told me,
you’ve got to label people for who
they are and things for what they
are. And there’s power in that.”
Shortly after the church massa-
cre, then-Gov. Nikki Haley (R) fi-
nally pushed to remove the Confed-
erate flag from the state capitol. But
Moore, who also noted that South
Carolina lawmakers haven’t enact-
ed gun control measures since the
shootings, dismissed it as a symbol-
ic gesture meant to burnish Haley’s
image. “It did nothing to stop hate.
It did nothing to protect lives. It did
nothing to heal the pain, the
wounds that my family suffered.”
At their Bible study sessions,
and at a meeting with Washington
Post journalists on Wednesday,
church members described their
deep disappointment with how lit-
tle the country had changed since
the murders at Mother Emanuel.
They sat in the sanctuary of the
206-year-old church building, sun-
light streaming through stained
glass windows. There, a photo col-
lage of the nine church members
who were killed covers most of a
wall; next to it sits a newly-installed
security system, with large moni-
tors. The downstairs area where
the shooting took place is a sacred
space, off limits to visitors. Church
leaders, trying to move past the
shooting, are raising money to ren-
ovate the sanctuary and building.
The members were concernedBu≠alo shooting stirs
painful memories in S.C.
PHOTOS BY JON GERBERG/THE WASHINGTON POST
FROM TOP: Carlotta Dennis, 69; Clifford Jones, 62; Willi Glee, 81;
and the Rev. Eric S.C. Manning, 54; all at Mother Emanuel Church
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