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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsEmanuel AME Church of Charleston History
http://usslave.blogspot.com/2012/03/emanuel-ame-church-of-charleston.html<snip>
Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church Overview
The Gothic Revival building that houses the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston is a testament to the determination of the church's congregation and earliest founders. The present day structure with its signature steeple was built in 1891, replacing an earlier wooden church from 1872 that was damaged in the Charleston Earthquake of 1886. Many of the brick and marble panels were restored between 1949 and 1951.
EMANUEL AME CHURCH
Documenting the American South--The roots of the Emanuel AME Church date back to 1816, when Morris Brown organized a withdrawal of the Charleston Methodist Episcopal Church's black members over a burial ground dispute. The newly-formed congregation quickly established themselves as an African Methodist Episcopal church, a denomination that was founded earlier in Philadelphia.
Brown was eventually jailed for violating laws restricting free and enslaved blacks from holding religious gatherings without white supervision. Then, after the first incarnation of the church was burned under a cloud of suspicion over a suspected slave uprising, the congregation continued to worship until 1834, when all-black churches became officially outlawed. After a period of underground worship, the church formally reorganized publicly in 1865 and adopted the Hebrew name Emanuel, meaning "God is with us".
The church is the oldest AME church in the South and has the oldest black congregation south of Baltimore, Maryland. (http://www.sciway.net/tourism/emanuel-ame-church.html)
Posted by Ron at 8:00 PM
MLK spoke here
lovemydog
(11,833 posts)countryjake
(8,554 posts)Last edited Thu Jun 18, 2015, 05:24 PM - Edit history (2)
the damned streets have never been safe. It's so sad and shameful that this is the place that a hate-filled white man chose to attack. A church that holds such meaning, so much history, for so many people.
"Mother Emanuel" A.M.E. Church
http://www.emanuelamechurch.org/churchhistory.php
Reverend Clementa Pinckney
The Reverend Honorable Clementa C. Pinckney was born July 30, 1973 the son of Mr. John Pinckney and the late Theopia Stevenson Pinckney of Ridgeland, South Carolina. He was educated in the public schools of Jasper County. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Allen University with a degree in Business Administration. While there, Reverend Pinckney served as freshman class president, student body president, and senior class president. Ebony Magazine recognized Rev. Pinckney as one the "Top College Students in America". During his junior year, he received a Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson Summer Research Fellowship in the fields of public policy and international affairs. He received a graduate fellowship to the University of South Carolina where he earned a Master's degree in public administration. He completed a Master's of Divinity from the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary.
Rev. Pinckney answered the call to preach at the age of thirteen and received his first appointment to pastor at the age of eighteen. He has served the following charges: Young's Chapel-Irmo, The Port Royal Circuit, Mount Horr-Yonges Island, Presiding Elder of the Wateree District and Campbell Chapel, Bluffton. He serves as the pastor of historic Mother Emanuel A.M.E. in Charleston, South Carolina.
Rev. Pinckney was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1996 at the age of twenty-three. In 2000, he was elected to the State Senate at the age of twenty-seven. He is one of the youngest persons and the youngest African-American in South Carolina to be elected to the State Legislature. He represents Jasper, Beaufort, Charleston, Colleton, and Hampton Counties. His committee assignments include Senate Finance, Banking and Insurance, Transportation, Medical Affairs and Corrections and Penology. Washington Post columnist, David Broder, called Rev. Pinckney a "political spirit lifter for surprisingly not becoming cynical about politics."
Rev. Pinckney has served in other capacities in the state to include a college trustee and corporate board member. In May 2010, he delivered the Commencement Address for the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary.
He and his wife Jennifer have two children - Eliana and Malana.
The sister of former North Carolina senator Malcolm Graham was also one of the murdered victims tonight; she would have turned 55 this Sunday, a librarian for 31 years. Nine victims dead, gunned down in a church that was burned to the ground 193 years ago by white power.
jesus.
malaise
(269,067 posts)I can't sleep after this vile act of racism.
countryjake
(8,554 posts)I tried to watch cable news until they started talking about the pope, switched that off right quick, then tried sleeping, got back up to read the newspapers online, now watching cable news again.
How can anyone not be angry about this? A dastardly attack, that's what the mayor called it. Hate
malaise
(269,067 posts)He's the wrong color - expect to hear about this lone wolf later.
countryjake
(8,554 posts)who murdered Walter Scott, they'll say the poor guy had unresolved mental issues or was abused as a child.
This was racist terrorism and we all can see that, plain and simple.
malaise
(269,067 posts)lone wolf you hear - with mental issues - not white supremacist who knew the historical importance of this church and who was the pastor.
countryjake
(8,554 posts)that the church is 100 years old?
It was 200 years ago that the congregation was founded; any church is the people who gather in it, not the specific building where they meet. It's called "Mother" Emanuel for a reason.
I bet they're following up on the telephone call the guy made, the bomb threat, and will have him caught soon. They'd better! The man is out for blood. Who knows where his next terror attack could be?
malaise
(269,067 posts)Ignorance is bliss - this church was part of the underground movement.
countryjake
(8,554 posts)On CNN
malaise
(269,067 posts)and the car - have to wonder if that is his hair or a wig?
countryjake
(8,554 posts)And that's what they call a hoodie? Don't look like any hoodies I got.
He must be wearing a disguise or else he's really weird looking.
Groucho nose and Moe hair.
God, he looks so young.
malaise
(269,067 posts)Groucho nose and Moe hair - they'll identify him shortly.
countryjake
(8,554 posts)MADem
(135,425 posts)Skinny with a weird haircut.
countryjake
(8,554 posts)Maybe he wore Groucho glasses just to get past the cameras, into the church, then took them off when he got to the room where the prayer meeting was going on.
I read a local report, in the Charleston Post and Courier, I think, that one of the six women murdered had worked for the church for over thirty years, a grandma. That kid had to have a whole lotta hate in him to just mow down people like her. Little old ladies, massacred.
malaise
(269,067 posts)she questioned whether it was a fake nose as well.
MADem
(135,425 posts)I think his shiny face was reflecting the color of the church. I didn't see any nose or groucho glasses in the two pictures they have released.
I am hearing all kinds of reports--if it is true that he left one woman alive so she could tell others, he's full of hate and not full of crazy like that Sandy Hook guy.
It's hard to retain a principled opposition to the death penalty in the face of this kind of thing. I'd be lying if if I said I wasn't struggling.
countryjake
(8,554 posts)maybe I need to turn our tv back on. I've looked at three different online newspapers where they've been released and every time I click on "enlarge" I'm taken to the same page I was on originally. My eyes are so poor, even with a magnifying glass it's hard to see the thumbnails. The biggest photos I've looked at all morning are the ones that joshcryer posted in his threads reporting on the News Conferences.
I may just bust the television if I have to listen to some of those commentators discussing how "disturbed" the guy must be. Why aren't they discussing racism? All of the papers I've read did report that he stayed with them for a long time, "lingering" is how one described him, and that he left one woman unharmed, deliberately, to tell about what he did.
There's only been one person in my life that I ever wished death on and back then, I had to analyze and struggle with rational thought versus irrational, to maintain my own principles. Whisk forward thru one whole lifetime, and I ended up having to provide her with TLC and help her during her final months. I'll always feel that holding to my morals was the best route for me. I have trouble smooshing an ant.
Okay, Carol Costello is doing CNN right now, so maybe I can watch it again.
MADem
(135,425 posts)And killing.
I just can't fathom how anyone could hate so much they could even contemplate this kind of awfulness, never mind carry it out.
countryjake
(8,554 posts)Just like we're all politics all the time, they obsess on how they can protect and reclaim the "whiteness".
How did you see that his friends on FaceBook were lots of Black guys? I clicked on the link that somebody provided in another thread but didn't see any place that showed his friends. (I don't do FB)
We've got Sovereign Citizens up here (who started out as fanatical, racist, and hateful as they come), but in studying up on them and remaining aware of what they're up to nationally, I've read that they've now decided to recruit Black people in other parts of the country, in the Midwest and in the South. I know, don't say it, how could any Black be wooed by a pack of racists...I've no idea, except maybe that their numbers dwindled to such measly amounts, they've taken a new tack just to keep their sick "club" alive. When I read what you'd said about his "friends" it made me wonder.
God, I'm glad he's caught.
MADem
(135,425 posts)All I could see was that creepy pic in the woods, his basic info (hometown, name, HS) and a list of eighty nine friends. At least a third appeared to be black--not just guys, girls, too. Some went to the same HS he did. Of course, the definition of "friend" can be very loose on social media, that catfish movie/tv show wouldn't have gone anywhere without that kind of easy acquaintance. It might be that you have to "do" fb to see anything. I have an account that I use solely for instances like this - when a fb page makes the news.
countryjake
(8,554 posts)when I looked at the FB link.
I read this afternoon that the Southern Poverty Law Center is saying that he hadn't been on their radar, at all, and so far, they aren't sure if he was affiliated with any of the many white supremacist groups they track in South Carolina.
I liked how Todd Rutherford flustered Jake Tapper this morning on CNN during an interview, blasting Fox News. Only video I could find of it is a shaky one, but I loved what Rutherford said:
South Carolina is one of five state that does not have a hate crimes law. South Carolina is still the only state that I am aware of that still flies a Confederate flag in front of the statehouse dome. South Carolina represents and is emblematic of the problem, which is words that come from these networks that broadcast what they call news, but it's not. It's really hate speech and coded language and leads people to believe that they can walk into a church, because it's no longer a house of God, but a killing ground. It's a place they can feel free to desecrate and leave blood everywhere and that's what this young man did.
And he did so based on some ill-gotten belief, on some wrong belief that it's okay to do that. He hears that, because he watches the news and he watches things like FOX News, where they talk about things that they call news, but they're really not. They use that coded language, they use hate speech, they talk about the president as if he's not the president. They talk about church-goers as if they are really not church-goers. And that's what this young man acted on. That's why he could walk into a church and treat people like animals when they are really human beings.
Butterbean
(1,014 posts)He looks like, swear on my life, your standard prep school punk. You could take him out of that picture, slap him in some khaki shorts and a short sleeved polo, and drop him into a stereotypical southern smiling family beach picture. Dude looks like 100's of the kids I went up against in debate tournaments. JMHO.
malaise
(269,067 posts)Useful input - I'm clueless about kids in that community.
Butterbean
(1,014 posts)countryjake
(8,554 posts)Dylann Roof.
malaise
(269,067 posts)RW neo-Nazi family????
countryjake
(8,554 posts)I wonder who's hiding him?
hootinholler
(26,449 posts)Flat out.
malaise
(269,067 posts)John Stewart was brilliant last night and even Joe Scum called him a domestic terrorist this morning.
I am pleasantly surprised.
cali
(114,904 posts)in its founding
malaise
(269,067 posts)What I don't understand is why they let him stay for so long - why was no one suspicious - if it's true that he sat there for an hour before opening fire - was he wearing that fake nose and funny hair? That's what I don't get.
cali
(114,904 posts)open and accepting. I don't, Malaise. That's just stupid speculation on my part. And I don't feel much like speculating this morning. The terrible facts, 9 people at worship, brutally gunned down, 9 PoC, just keep punching me in the gut.
malaise
(269,067 posts)This hit me in the gut. I'm so tired of racism and the slaughter of innocents.
MADem
(135,425 posts)bouncing off his shiny nose--that's my judgment anyway, based on the pictures. The hair was real.
I saw somewhere that he may have gone to bible study there previously; thus, there was a lot of premeditation. He might have been known to the people there, and that's why they didn't react.
malaise
(269,067 posts)Now I need some sleep.
eridani
(51,907 posts)The more you read about Charlestons Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, otherwise known as Mother Emanuel, the more awe you feel for its historic resilience amidst white-supremacist terror.
This church is now known as the scene of a massacre, which is being investigated as a hate crime. Nine are dead, but this institution will not fall. We know this because it has stood tall amidst the specter of racist violence for 200 years. Next year, in fact, was to be the 200th anniversary of the founding of the church. It was 1816 when the Rev. Morris Brown formed Mother Emanuel under the umbrella of the Free African Society of the AME Church. They were one of three area churches known as the Bethel Circuit. This means that a free church in the heart of the confederacy was formed and thrived 50 years before the start of the Civil War. It had a congregation of almost 2,000, roughly 15 percent of black people in what was, including the enslaved, the majority-black city of Charleston. Because the church opened its doors to the enslaved and free alike, services were often raided by police and private militias for violating laws about the hours when slaves could be out among the public. They were also raided for breaking laws that prohibited teaching slaves to read at Bible study sessions. (It was at one of these Bible study sessions that the shooter opened fire Wednesday night, after sitting among the people for over an hour.)
More violence against the church was to come, as one of its founders was Denmark Vesey. If you dont know that name, then your US history class failed you. Vesey was born into bondage on St. Thomas Island where he was known as Telemaque. At age 32 in 1799,
countryjake
(8,554 posts)The article gets to the core of why Mother Emmanuel was the chosen place for this horrific racist attack.
Roof did his own research on the church and that is why he drove miles and miles to carry out his terrorism.
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/06/18/charlestons-mother-emanuel-church-has-stared-down-racist-violence-200-years
The violence of this week will not end the church either. The killing of nine people inside Mother Emmanuel calls backward to the 1960s civil rightsera church bombings. It also calls to a present in 2015 where video after video is showing white America a policing system that sees black life as having little value, a present in 2015 where mass media relish black death but do not acknowledge black life, and a present in 2015 where Charlestons Walter Scott can be calmly shot in the back by police. It also calls to a present where police officials and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley speak solemnly about the Mother Emanuel martyrs, under that enduring symbol of racist terror the Confederate flag. This demonstrates with utter clarity that the past that Charleston city leaders try to tuck away with a statue of Denmark Vesey amidst the lucrative plantation tourism is far from past.
eridani
(51,907 posts)--but if people would like an OP, I'll do that to.
malaise
(269,067 posts)Did you know that Tuesday June 16 was the 193rd anniversary of Denmark Vesey's planned slave revolt and this slaughter was on the 17th.