In mid-June, amid a sweltering summer heat, attendees to the memorial event being held at the Charleston Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, in South Carolina, walked past bouquets of red roses, sunflowers, lilies, and daisies hanging between the metal gates. They climbed the church steps 10 years to the day after one of the most deadly racist mass shootings in modern American history, a tall palmetto tree standing nearby, and, to its right, a large white stone bench — a preview of the Emanuel Nine Memorial.
The bench is just one part of the years-long project to memorialize the lives of the nine Black congregants who died that day. The planned memorial, replete with a survivor’s garden and a marble fountain to be carved with the names of the victims, remains unfinished. It’s a symbol of the difficulty of commemorating such a tragic site and, community members lament, a constant reminder of both a lack of progress in local and state law to prevent future tragedies, and a national political climate that stokes racial division rather than healing it.
“There is no progress,” said Katherine Sharpe, a Charleston native who grew up on Elizabeth Street, around the corner from the AME church. In her left hand, she flicked her fan as she recalled one of the victims, Myra Thompson, a family friend. “She was extremely close to my mother and was always there for me,” said Sharpe, 67, briefly smiling. “I’m very discouraged by the lack of love and compassion, and I’m not optimistic about the future of this country.”
Between 2015, the year of the shooting, and 2023, the most recent year for which data is available, nearly 9,000 people have lost their lives to gun violence in South Carolina, according to an analysis by The Trace’s Gun Violence Data Hub. Despite having one of the highest rates of firearm mortality in the country, the state passed a permitless carry law last year, and has yet to close the so-called Charleston Loophole, a federal rule that allows a gun sale to proceed after three business days, even if a background check has not cleared. That loophole enabled the AME shooter to arm himself. In 2023, an anti-hate bill which would increase penalties for perpetrators and track hate crime offenders passed the House, but has continually stalled in the Senate; it is named after Pastor Clementa Pinckney, a former senator who was leading the church when he was killed in the shooting.
“I’m not happy with where we are,” said Denise Quarles, Myra Thompson’s daughter. Quarles was the last person to speak with her mother before she entered the church, and when she heard the news, her world collapsed. “I would have thought we would have had more progress by now, but as you turn on the news, you find out more and more about other people losing their lives to guns.”
Charleston’s deep history of racism became a focal point when the mass shooter was found guilty on 33 counts of federal hate crimes for targeting the religious pillar, which opened its door to enslaved and free Black people in the nineteenth century. That history dates back to the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, by which an estimated 40 percent of all captive African slaves who entered North America came through the city, most prominently at Gadsden’s Wharf, a 15-minute walk from the AME church. The coastal city’s current leaders have formally apologized for its role in slavery, but in recent years, its conservative political leadership has attempted to distance the city from its history.
That distance coincides with increased racial tensions across the nation and division in conversations about how to address it. Nationally, since the Emanuel Nine died in their church, tens of thousands of hate crimes have occurred in the U.S., with over 11,800 reported in 2023 alone. Crimes motivated by race and ethnicity have been the most pervasive, making up more than half of all crimes, with anti-Black incidents representing the majority of all racially-targeted events. And research has found that firearms make hate crimes in the U.S. more deadly, with over 10,000 people being victims of firearm-related hate crimes every year. In South Carolina, the number of hate crimes nearly doubled between 2022 to 2023, going from 65 reported incidents to 115. It is one of only two states in the country without an anti-hate crime law on its books.
“Mother Emanuel felt like a smack in the face,” said Domnimechia “Donnie” Singleton, who runs a local violence prevention organization. “I see so many missing gaps that need to be filled when it comes to supporting the people of Charleston… and history often repeats itself.”
Singleton paused, took a deep breath. “Looking 10 years on, it’s like I can’t believe people have such a short attention span.”
Inside the church during the memorial service, banners dedicated to each victim who was killed in the shooting stood before colorful stained-glass windows. Pastor Eric Manning, Pinckney’s successor, opened the service.
“We come from many traditions, yet we are united in grief, hope, and our shared call to justice,” Manning said, as the congregation stood, eyes closed and heads bowed in prayer.
The collective grief of the oldest Black congregation in the South is generations long, but on June 17, 2015, the long tail of racism appeared again within its own walls. A 21-year-old white man was welcomed in during a Wednesday night Bible study, hiding a Glock handgun he’d obtained without passing a background check. He’d sat in one of the wooden pews, hoping to incite a race war. As the parishioners’ heads were bowed in prayer, he opened fire, fatally shooting nine Black people and wounding another.
For the local community, the shadows of the shooting are ever-present, but the AME church congregation has worked to repair the physical and emotional damage. In the days and months that followed the tragedy, bullet holes were filled and the church was reopened for services. Perhaps most importantly, a project to dedicate a memorial to the victims was initiated. Slated to open early next year, the memorial has struggled to come to fruition since it was first announced in 2017 by a group of church leaders, architects, and community activists, but is nearing its goal. To date, the memorial team has raised $20 million, but another $5 million is needed to complete the project, which they hope will serve as a reminder of the lives that were taken and their enduring legacy in this historic sanctuary.
“It’s hard to grieve for people who have died so publicly,” Sharpe said. “These victims were actual people who belonged to these families and their loved ones, but also this happened in front of the world.”
During the service, Rabbi Jeff Myers, who survived the 2018 mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, walked up to the church’s wooden lectern and hugged Pastor Manning before he spoke. Manning and Myers forged a friendship after the shooting at the synagogue, finding solace amid the shared experience of religious violence. Dressed in a black suit and a white button-up shirt, a black yarmulke atop his head, Myers’s face was flushed as he recalled his experience of survival.
“What is it like to be a survivor,” he asked the congregation. “It’s a nightmare. You learn to cope with it. Fortunately, I’ve been with a psychologist now for nearly seven years, and you learn to internalize it, integrate it into your being, and hopefully not have it destroy your life.”
Myers, Manning, and the AME church have focused on healing from trauma, turning inward to repair their congregations and communities grappling with the shooting’s aftermath, rather than centering on violence prevention. “There are multiple ways that people can respond to an event such as what happened at Tree of Life,” Myers told The Trace. “I decided to focus on other aspects, but there are some people who took a route focused on gun violence.”
In the absence of legislative progress, the onus to move the needle forward on shooting prevention has rested on the shoulders of grassroots organizers. Although facing limited support, local prevention organizations in Charleston have stepped in to lead the charge to address the city’s violence.
The day after the 10th anniversary of the shooting, about 10 miles from the church, dozens of local organizers, violence interrupters, law enforcement officials, and mental health counselors from the city gathered at a local community center to discuss ways the city can move forward.
“It’s not a lot of resources out here,” said Ronald Smith, who started a local community violence prevention organization after his 14-year-old daughter was fatally shot four years ago. Named for his daughter, Ronjanae Smith, the nonprofit provides mentorship, grief counseling, and job opportunities to families in need of financial support or navigating violence exposure. But Smith acknowledged that the work does not come without challenges.
“When they changed that law and South Carolina became a permitless carry state, it was like they slapped us in our face,” said Smith, “because the more work we’re trying to do to take guns out of young people’s hands, they put them back in people’s hands.”
Amid the present struggle to address the city’s gun violence, the presence of the AME shooting a decade ago still resonates.
“If a Black man would have went into a white church and did that kind of shooting, we wouldn’t be here right now, we’d be executed,” Smith said. “There has been a change, but I think it could be better. The racism is always going to be here; it’s never going to really change all the way.”
