Crowds outside Emanuel AME church tell of hurt and anger but also of a community determined to heal

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

The wooden noticeboard outside the Emanuel AME church still stated that Sunday service would start at 9.30am and be led by Pastor Clementa Pinckney, as hundreds of mourners proceeded to duck under yellow police tape to lay flowers.



The horror of what unfolded on Wednesday evening, less than 24 hours earlier, was yet to settle.



“It’s just mind-boggling. I don’t have the right words to say it. Just shock,” said Marymargaret Givens, a 60-year-old housekeeper who works a few blocks away. “The way it happened. They were just innocent people. They were godly people.” She gazed back towards the church, said a prayer for the dead and then walked away.



Pinckney and eight others attending a prayer session were shot dead in a massacre that marked one of the most vicious attacks on a place of worship in modern US history.

Police have described the murders as a hate crime and arrested 21-year-old Dylann Roof, who was pictured on his Facebook page with the flags of apartheid South Africa and white government-era Rhodesia adorned on his jacket.



Charleston shooting suspect Dylann Roof 'wanted to ignite civil war' Read more

“It was an evil that was incomprehensible,” said Pastor Cress Darwin, who had earlier led a prayer session at the Second Presbyterian church next door to Emanuel AME.

As throngs of worshippers poured on to the streets, many in tears, Darwin went on: “But this community is coming together. Because of it we will be more vigilant in terms of our security. But because of who we serve, we will not stop welcoming in the stranger, because death is not the last word.”



Marilyn Martin, 57, had attended school with Myra Thompson and had known Tywanza Sanders, both of whom died. She described Sanders as a “strong man with a good head on his shoulders”. The 26-year-old, she said, had just graduated college and “couldn’t wait to be a productive citizen”.



As mourners congregated, Roof was transferred to Charleston county jail, after he was arrested in Shelby, North Carolina, earlier in the morning.

After waiving his extradition rights, Roof was taken back to South Carolina wearing a striped suit and bullet-proof vest, and placed in isolation at the county jail in Charleston.



While the prayers outside Emanuel AME focused almost entirely on the victims, 49-year-old Avis Williamsgrant said a prayer for Roof as well.



“I’m just thinking that the devil stepped in,” she said as her children laid flowers behind the police tape. “And I’m praying for the young man also. We’re all God’s children and even though he did what he did, he was just a little sick.”



William Dudley Gregorie, a city councilman and trustee of Emanuel AME, sympathised with Williamsgrant.



“We’re not a church that hates,” he said. “We’re a church that’s full of forgiveness. We feel that when you hate, you lose, and you let evil in.”

Gregorie has worshipped at Emanuel all his life. He was born across the street. His 93-year-old mother and her ancestors worshipped all their lives there, too. He knew each and every one of those killed “like family”.



“It leaves a void, not just in church, but in our community. But we’ll still have to heal. If the sore doesn’t heal it just festers and gets worse, and hopefully in time we’ll be able to fill this void.”



For others the deaths underscored a starker reality. McKayla Roberts, 21, who was wearing a #BlackLivesMatter T-shirt, said she was reluctant to leap to conclusions about Roof’s motives but felt the massacre, in a broader sense, had echoes of her city’s dark history.

“This is where slavery started, and that mindset is still here,” she said of Charleston, one of the early ports of entry for African slaves. “White man, black victims. But I’m not going to put racism in it. It is just wrong.”

As the day turned to humid night, mourners dispersed quietly. The noticeboard outside remained unaltered.