The nine victims — three men and six women, who ranged in age from 26 to 87 — were leaders, motivators, counselors and the people everyone could turn to for a heap of prayer, friends and relatives said. Led by the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, 41, the pastor of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church who was also a state senator, the group included a girls’ track coach, a recent college graduate, a librarian, a university admissions coordinator and others devoted to churches in the area.

Image The Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, who was a state senator. Credit... Sam Holland/South Carolina Senate, via Reuters

Mr. Sanders, 26, had graduated from Allen University last year and worked full-time as a barber to pay his bills. He was proud of his degree in business administration from Allen, a historically black college, but he wanted more. He told Torrence Shaw, a friend, that he wanted to go to graduate school to pursue music production. Mr. Sanders had been researching scholarships.

But it was his personality, even more than his ambition, that left an impression on his friends and family.

“For him being so young, he was wise,” Mr. Shaw said. “He was always caring and would give the shirt off his back to anybody. He was the first person I would always call to get his wisdom and advice.”

The two met in high school and Mr. Sanders helped Mr. Shaw cope with the death of his father. But he reminded him that, with Mr. Shaw’s older brother away at school, he had to step up and be the “man of the family.”