HOMICIDE: Charleston Church Shooting
- Yasmin Sudarsanam
- Jul 24, 2024
- 4 min read
Trigger Warning: The following case includes depictions of graphic violence and attempted suicide. Please read at your own discretion.
The recent resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement has shed a renewed light on past cases of racial injustice or racially-motivated violence. One such instance occurred in 2015 at a well-known church in Charleston, when nine lives were tragically taken at a Bible study session. This is the story of the Charleston Church Shooting.
On the evening of June 17, 2015, individuals were gathering at Emanuel Africa Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. As one of the oldest Black churches in the south, the building had survived being burned down for housing instigators of a 1822 slave revolt, which is partially why it would go on to become a target for racial violence that night. One of the individuals in charge at the church was activist and state senator Reverend Clementa Pinckney, the church’s senior pastor. He was known to be an advocate for police accountability and had delivered an outspoken response to murder of Walter Scott at the hands of a police officer the previous April.
That night, Dylann Roof had joined the congregation for a Bible study session, where he was welcomed with open arms by all. Roof sat with the attendees and listened for the entire session, but suddenly, when they were in a circle holding hands with their eyes closed in a moment of prayer and solidarity, Roof drew a gun and announced that African Americans were “taking over the country.” He then opened fire, firing over seventy rounds into the room and killing Clementa C. Pinckney, 41; Cynthia Graham Hurd, 54; Susie J. Jackson, 87; DePayne Vontrease Middleton-Doctor, 49; Tywanza Kibwe Diop Sanders, 26; Daniel Lee Simmons Sr., 74; Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45, and Myra Singleton Quarles Thompson, 59 in the process. There were only three survivors who were physically unharmed that night. Roof then attempted to shoot himself but found he had no remaining ammunition and chose to fled instead.
He was arrested the following morning in North Carolina. Footage of the arrest has continued to draw outrage over the past decade because of the lack of hostility during the interaction with Roof, a proven killer, which heavily contrasts other encounters between police officers and members of the Black community. The senseless violence and police brutality against these innocent and unarmed individuals stands in stark contrast to the image of an officer re-holstering his gun and backing away from the car as Roof was arrested. Just two months prior, a police officer in North Charleston had shot and killed Walter Scott, a man running away after being pulled over to draw attention to his broken brake light. The primary difference between these cases apart from the severity of their crimes? Race. Scott was an African American man whereas Roof was Caucasian. Police even went so far as to buy Roof a meal from Burger King following his arrest, drawing further attention to their unwarranted violence against innocent African American individuals.
Dylann Roof, who was twenty-one years old at the time of the shooting, had dropped out of high school during ninth grade. Shortly before the tragedy, he had posted a racist manifesto claiming he had been "awakened" by the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin — the seventeen-year old African American who was tragically shot to death by a neighborhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman. Furthermore, Roof’s online record showed him posing with confederate flags and other symbols of white supremacy.
His trial for the nine murders committed that night began with the prosecution attempting to expose Roof’s radical and white-supremacist beliefs. Roof chose to represent himself, using his opening statement to explain that he had fired his lawyers for their desire to use the mental insanity defense. Roof showed absolutely no regret or remorse for the lives he took and the families he fundamentally broke apart; even six weeks after the massacre, he justified his decision to take nine innocent lives and condemned the Black community who had rallied in support of the victims in a journal found in his jail cell. Jurors deliberated for under two hours before finding him guilty of all thirty-three counts that arose during the trial. Roof, now convicted on federal hate crimes and state murder charges, was sentenced to death, a sentence which was upheld through appeal attempts in August of 2021 in which Roof attempted to challenge his mental competency at the time of the crime and trial. To this day, Roof remains on death row in Terre Haute Federal Prison in Indiana.
The Charleston Church massacre shook the nation and called attention to the frequency of mass shootings like this. It was brought back into the spotlight by other instances of violence against the black community in recent years, like the senseless deaths which sparked the resurgence Black Lives Matter movement. The families of the victims went on to sue the federal government in 2016 for permitting Roof to purchase a gun to carry out the brutal shooting despite his alarming criminal history and digital footprint, both of which showed clear signs of racism, white-supremacy, and a desire to enact violence. The lawsuit eventually resulted in a settlement which presented each claimant with between $6 and 7.5 million in damages. In the settlement, the federal government admitted that the FBI was negligent in failing to prevent the sale of the gun which was used in the shooting. During a eulogy for Pinckney, then-President Obama led the audience in singing “Amazing Grace,” celebrating the victims kindness, perseverance, and faith. The Charleston Church Shooting continues to serve as a rallying point for those dedicated to the fight against racial violence and in favor of more restrictive firearm background checks and checks against police brutality.
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