Charleston church reopens, holds 1st service since 9 blacks killed
Print Edition
HUNDREDS of people packed a sweltering Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, yesterday as it reopened to worshipers after a gunman, identified as a 21-year-old white man, shot dead nine black church members.
A mostly black congregation swelled to about 400 people for a memorial service remembering those killed last Wednesday in the latest United States mass shooting, some wiping away tears and praying. Outside the church, a large, mostly white, crowd gathered to express solidarity with those inside.
Armed police searched bags at the door of the church, home to the oldest African-American congregation in the southern US, and officers stood at intervals inside the church along the side of the nave and in the gallery. Those attending the service used hand fans to try to keep cool in the heat.
The church massacre has again trained a spotlight on the country’s pervasive and divisive issues of race relations and gun crime.
The suspect, Dylann Roof, was arrested on Thursday and has been charged with nine counts of murder. Authorities say he spent an hour in a Bible study group at the church, nicknamed “Mother Emanuel” for its key role in US black history, before opening fire.
Federal investigators were examining a racist manifesto apparently written by Roof that surfaced on a website on Saturday. The site featured photos and white supremacist writings, as well as an “explanation” by the author for taking some unspecified action.
“I have no choice ... I chose Charleston because it is (the) most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to whites in the country,” it said.
The massacre was the latest in a series of mass shootings that have reignited a debate over gun control in a country where the right to own firearms is constitutionally protected.
Charleston Mayor Joseph Riley, on the CNN program “State of the Union,” made a pitch for stricter gun control laws. “It is insane the number of guns and the ease of getting guns in America,” Riley said. “It’s not that people should not carry guns and all of that, it’s just that there are so many of them and the ease of them and there is no accountability.”
President Barack Obama, in an interview on Friday, blamed the powerful gun-rights lobby group the National Rifle Association and an apathetic public for the failure to implement new gun control measures.
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