Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, Opens Memorial to Victims of 2015 Shooting

Mother Emanuel AME Church, the oldest African Methodist Episcopal church in the South, has opened a memorial to the victims of the 2015 shooting at its Charleston, South Carolina, sanctuary. The memorial opens to the public on Saturday, according to WTOP, and it stands in a courtyard by the church’s front door. Rev. Eric Manning is the church’s pastor and co-chair of the Mother Emanuel Memorial Foundation board.

The memorial is a completed marble installation. It is anchored by a Fountain of Grace, a shallow basin etched with the names of the six women and three men who were slain. The installation also includes two Fellowship Benches and a Cross of Hope. A garden honoring the five survivors will be built next, according to the reports.

The memorial honors the “Emanuel Nine,” the Black churchgoers killed by an avowed white supremacist in 2015. On June 17, 2015, a young white supremacist entered the church during a Wednesday evening Bible study, one report says. The congregation was discussing the Parable of the Sower from the Gospel of Mark when the visitor joined them. That visitor, later identified as Dylann Roof, remained for about 45 minutes and killed nine people during the service, according to the same report. The memorial gives the victims’ names a permanent place in the church’s courtyard, a form of comfort in grief (Psalm 34:18).

Among those killed was Rev. Clementa Pinckney, pastor of Mother Emanuel and a South Carolina state senator. The other victims named in the reports were Rev. Depayne Middleton-Doctor, Cynthia Graham Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lee Lance, Tywanza Sanders, Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr., Myra Thompson, and Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton.

Manning said the church’s love and forgiveness are engrafted in its DNA, according to one report. He said he hopes the memorial will mean something to everyone, as quoted by WTOP. Malcolm Graham, whose sister Cynthia Graham Hurd died in the fellowship hall, attended the 2023 groundbreaking, the same outlet reported.

Alana Grant described the survivors’ living with memories of the shooting as “nothing short of heroism,” WTOP reported. The reports do not agree on how the story should be dated. One report carries a June 17, 2015 date line but has a headline referring to “11 years later,” and the reports do not give a specific date for the memorial’s opening beyond the Saturday on which it opens to the public. The reports also differ in how much detail they give about the memorial’s features. The garden honoring the five survivors is the next part of the memorial still to come.