Charleston church shooting

• 1. Introduction

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  The Charleston church shooting began with an ordinary Wednesday-night Bible study on the 17th of June 2015. Thirteen people gathered at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Twelve of them were churchgoers. The thirteenth was a stranger, a 21-year-old white man named Dylann Roof, who came in and asked for the pastor by name. He sat down beside Reverend Clementa Pinckney and listened to the discussion.

  Nine of the people in that room would die. At that moment, it ranked among the deadliest mass shootings at a place of worship in U.S. history, level with the Waddell Buddhist temple shooting. Every victim was African American, and the church was the oldest Black church in the Southern United States.

  This documentary asks why that church was chosen and what its walls had already survived. It asks who the nine people were. It asks how a young man with two recent arrests was able to buy a gun, and how a grieving community answered him in a courtroom within days. And it follows a question that reached the grounds of the South Carolina State House: what a single flag had come to mean.

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• 2. Mother Emanuel

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  The congregation at Emanuel was founded in 1816, two years after Richard Allen created the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Allen's denomination was the first independent Black denomination in the country. The Charleston congregation grew into the oldest African Methodist Episcopal church in the South, and people there call it "Mother Emanuel." It is also among the oldest Black congregations south of Baltimore.

  In 1822, Denmark Vesey, one of the church's co-founders, was suspected of planning a slave rebellion in Charleston. Thirty-five people were hanged, Vesey among them, and the church was burned down. Charleston's citizens accepted that the uprising had been set to begin at midnight on the 16th of June 1822. The shooting of 2015 happened on the 193rd anniversary of that thwarted plan.

  The congregation survived anyway. In 1834 the city shut the rebuilt church, along with other all-Black congregations. Its members met in secret until 1865, when they formally reorganized and took the name Emanuel, meaning "God with us." They rebuilt from a design drawn by Vesey's son. The 1886 Charleston earthquake badly damaged that structure, and the building that stands today dates from 1891.

  In 2015, commentators reached for another comparison. In 1963, the Ku Klux Klan bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, a politically active Black church. Four Black girls were killed and fourteen people were injured. That attack helped galvanize support for federal civil rights legislation.

  Many scholars, journalists, activists and politicians insisted that Charleston should not be read as a one-off. They pointed to a longer record of racism against Black Americans. In 1996, Congress passed the Church Arson Prevention Act after 154 suspicious church fires since 1991. As recently as 2009, a Black church in Massachusetts burned down the day after Barack Obama's first inauguration.

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• 3. Six Minutes

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  Around 9:05 p.m., the Charleston Police Department began taking calls about a shooting at Emanuel AME Church. Dispatchers described a white man of about 21, roughly 5 ft 9 in tall, in a gray sweatshirt and jeans. He carried a .45-caliber Glock handgun and eight magazines. Each held 11 hollow-point bullets, which made 88 in total.

  Inside, the study had been going for an hour. Survivors' accounts, relayed by others, say the newcomer disagreed with parts of the discussion of Scripture. When the group bowed their heads to pray, he stood, drew the gun from a fanny pack, and shot Pinckney five times.

  Reverend Daniel Simmons rose and shouted, "Let me see my pastor. I need to check my pastor!" He was shot five times as he tried to reach the side door. Then the gunman walked up to him and fired once more at point-blank range.

  The shooter then turned on the rest of the group. He paced the room, reloaded, and fired at people hiding under tables. He even shot a Bible. In all, he reloaded his gun seven times.

  Polly Sheppard was praying when he told her to "shut up." He asked whether he had shot her yet, and she said no. By her account, he replied, "I'm not going to. I'm going to leave you here to tell the story." A local NAACP leader, Dot Scott, heard a different version from relatives. In it, he wanted one survivor because he planned to shoot himself, and he turned the gun on his own head only to find it empty.

  Tywanza Sanders, 26, was already wounded when he rose from the floor and asked why the man was attacking churchgoers. The reply was, "I have to do it. You rape our women and you're taking over the nation. And you have to go." Roof shot Sanders several times.

  Sheppard used a cellphone to call 911. Sanders' mother and a five-year-old girl lay still and pretended to be dead, and both lived. Roof left through a side door, reloaded once more, and drove away. The shooting ended at about 9:11 p.m.

  Several hours later, someone phoned a bomb threat to the Courtyard by Marriott hotel on Calhoun Street. Police had to evacuate the nearby area, which slowed their investigation.

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• 4. The Emanuel Nine

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  Susie Jackson was the oldest of the victims, a longtime member of the church choir and the Bible study. Her grandnephew Tywanza Sanders, a graduate of Allen University, was the youngest at 26. Six women and three men were killed, and they came to be called "The Emanuel Nine." Eight died at the scene. Daniel Simmons died later at MUSC Medical Center. Investigators recovered 54 projectiles from the nine bodies.

  Clementa C. Pinckney was 41, the church's senior pastor and a South Carolina state senator. Two months earlier, a white police officer in nearby North Charleston had shot Walter Scott. Pinckney held rallies in response, and in the Senate he pushed for legislation requiring police to wear body cameras.

  Cynthia Graham Hurd managed a branch of the Charleston County Public Library system. Her brother, Malcolm Graham, had served as a state senator. Ethel Lee Lance was the church's sexton, the person who keeps the building.

  Depayne Middleton-Doctor was a pastor who also worked as a school administrator and admissions coordinator at Southern Wesleyan University. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton was a pastor, a speech therapist and a track coach at Goose Creek High School. Myra Thompson taught the Bible study. Daniel Simmons, a pastor, also served at Greater Zion AME Church in Awendaw.

  Five people survived the shooting unharmed. Among them were Felicia Sanders, Tywanza's mother, and a five-year-old girl, plus Polly Sheppard. Early reports spoke of a tenth victim who was wounded, yet no official record shows an injured survivor in the study.

  Pinckney's wife and youngest daughter were also inside the building. They were in the pastor's office, and the door was locked.

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• 5. The Gunman

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  Dylann Storm Roof was named as the suspect after his father and uncle saw security photographs on the news and told police it was him. He was born in Columbia, South Carolina, and was living in Eastover, a largely African American community. In the months before the attack he had been arrested twice, once for trespassing and once for drug possession.

  A Facebook photo showed him in a jacket with two emblems popular among white supremacists, the flags of former Rhodesia and of apartheid-era South Africa. On the 20th of June, bloggers found a website called "The Last Rhodesian," registered to a "Dylann Roof" on the 9th of February 2015. It held an unsigned manifesto, along with photos that included one of Roof with a handgun and a Confederate Battle Flag.

  In that writing, Roof said the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin made him "racially aware." He concluded that George Zimmerman had been right. He then searched Google for "black on White crime" and landed on the website of the Council of Conservative Citizens. There he read "pages upon pages" of cases. He wrote that he had "never been the same since that day."

  The site was last edited at 4:44 p.m. on the day of the shooting. Roof wrote, "At the time of writing I am in a great hurry." An unnamed source said he had planned the attack for around six months and had researched the church. Federal prosecutors later said that in August 2016 he was "self-radicalized" online, rather than shaped by any group.

  Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center said his remark about rape drew on what she called probably the oldest racist trope in the United States. Historian Lisa Lindquist-Dorr said the myth had long gripped white Southern men. Beirich added that African American women had in fact been far more often abused by white men.

  There had been warnings. Roof reportedly told friends and neighbors he meant to kill people, including in a plan aimed at the College of Charleston, and nobody took him seriously. One friend said Roof had talked about attacking a school and probably settled for the church because of its security.

  That friend was Joey Meek, who had briefly hidden Roof's gun. On the 17th of September, Meek was arrested for lying to federal investigators and failing to report a crime. He admitted keeping Roof's plans to himself. He also admitted telling other friends not to contact the FBI, though one of them called an FBI hotline anyway, and that call played a crucial role in the arrest. Meek pleaded guilty on the 29th of April 2016 and received 27 months in prison in March 2017.

  The gun itself was a second failure. FBI Director James Comey said a police report on Roof's drug admission should have blocked the sale. A jail clerk had entered a misdemeanor as a felony by mistake. The jail noticed two days later but never changed it. Then the FBI examiner phoned the wrong agency because they had little information on law enforcement in Lexington County.

  The FBI ran a 30-day review. Survivors sued the FBI on the 1st of July 2016, and in 2019 the Fourth Circuit ruled that families could sue the federal government. On the 29th of October 2021, the Justice Department agreed to pay $88 million to the families and the wounded.

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• 6. Capture and Courtroom

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  At 10:44 on the morning of the 18th of June, police in Shelby, North Carolina, stopped a black Hyundai Elantra. It was about 245 miles from the church. A woman had spotted the car on U.S. Route 74, with its three-flag Confederate States of America bumper decoration, and recognized it from images of the church's security cameras. She later said, "I got closer and saw that haircut. I was nervous. I had the worst feeling. Is that him or not him?" She followed it for 35 miles until she was sure police were closing in. A .45-caliber pistol was in the car.

  Roof waived extradition and was flown to the Sheriff Al Cannon Detention Center in North Charleston that evening. His neighbor in the cell block was Michael Slager, the former officer charged with murder in the Walter Scott shooting. Unconfirmed reports say Roof confessed and said he hoped to start a race war. He reportedly told investigators he almost abandoned the plan because the churchgoers had been so kind to him.

  On the 19th of June, he was charged with nine counts of murder and a weapons count. At his bond hearing by videoconference, survivors and relatives of five victims spoke to him directly. They said they were "praying for his soul" and forgave him. Governor Nikki Haley called on prosecutors to seek the death penalty.

  On the 7th of July, a grand jury added three attempted murder charges, one for each survivor. Federal charges followed, including nine firearm murder counts and 24 civil rights violations, and 18 of them carried the death penalty. Roof pleaded not guilty on the 31st of July on the advice of his lawyer David Bruck, who said Roof wanted to plead guilty. The death penalty even became a talking point in the 2016 Democratic primaries, where Hillary Clinton backed it and Bernie Sanders opposed it.

  In November 2016, a judge let Roof represent himself, and on the 5th of December he hired his lawyers back for the guilt phase. His trial began on the 7th of December 2016. Eight days later, he was found guilty on all 33 federal charges. At sentencing he again dismissed his lawyers. On the 4th of January 2017 he told the court, "There's nothing wrong with me psychologically."

  Prosecutors read from a journal he kept in jail. "I would like to make it crystal clear, I do not regret what I did. I am not sorry. I have not shed a tear for the innocent people I killed." He was sentenced to death on the 10th of January 2017. In April 2017 he pleaded guilty to all nine state murder charges to avoid a second death sentence. He received life without parole.

  His appeals later argued that he was too disconnected from reality to defend himself. Lawyers described mental illness and a belief that white nationalists would free him after a race war. The Fourth Circuit rejected the appeal on the 25th of August 2021. The judges wrote that no record "can capture the full horror of what Roof did." The Supreme Court declined to hear the case on the 11th of October 2022. On the 23rd of December 2024, President Joe Biden spared 37 of 40 federal death-row inmates. Roof was not among them.

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• 7. Grief and Response

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  On the 21st of June 2015, four days after the attack, Emanuel AME Church reopened for Sunday worship, with the Reverend Dr. Norvel Goff Sr. delivering the sermon. That evening, organizers said up to 20,000 people crossed the Arthur Ravenel Bridge into downtown Charleston in a unity rally. Many carried signs and flags, and dozens of boats joined the procession.

  On the 25th of June, the funerals of Ethel Lance and Sharonda Coleman-Singleton took place at the church. Pinckney's body had lain in state at the South Carolina State House. His funeral was held the next day at a College of Charleston arena, and President Barack Obama delivered the eulogy. Services for Tywanza Sanders, Susie Jackson and Cynthia Graham Hurd followed. By the 2nd of July, Daniel Simmons had been buried.

  Hurd's family set up a fund for reading and literacy in her memory, meant to give children easier access to books. Nine artists painted portraits of the victims, which hung at the Principle Gallery for a month before going to the families. Larry Francis Lebby's portrait of Pinckney was unveiled in May 2016 and hangs in the state Senate chamber.

  Religious bodies spoke out too, including the World Methodist Council, Catholic bishops, and national Jewish and Muslim organizations. Muslim and Jewish groups raised several hundred thousand dollars to rebuild Black churches that burned in the weeks afterward. The FBI looked into those fires, and on the 3rd of July, Time reported they were unrelated. In 2019, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America recognized the Emanuel 9 as martyrs. Roof had belonged to one of its congregations.

  People also asked how a church should protect itself while staying open to anyone willing to pray. AME leaders issued a document called "12 Considerations for Congregational Security." It urged security teams, plans, and monitored entrances. Some churches weighed armed guards or metal detectors, though those ideas never caught on widely. Meanwhile some critics questioned the community's forgiveness of Roof.

  Giving continued. The Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson gave $100,000 to the Mother Emanuel Hope Fund, with $10,000 for each victim's family. On the 8th of January 2024, President Biden spoke at the church about the "poison" of white supremacy. Protesters interrupted him, chanting "ceasefire now." In 2025, events marked ten years since the shooting.

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• 8. The Word and the Flag

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  On the 19th of June 2015, FBI Director James Comey said the shooting was a hate crime but not terrorism. He argued that terrorism meant violence meant to influence a public body or citizenry, and he saw no political motive. Terrorism expert Brian Phillips disagreed, calling it "clearly a terrorist act" because a survivor was left to spread the message. Writer Glenn Greenwald said the early reports of "no sign of terrorism" meant only that the shooter was not Muslim. The Justice Department said it was investigating both a hate crime and domestic terrorism.

  The attack's reach did not end with Roof. Benjamin Thomas Samuel McDowell was arrested for planning to shoot up a synagogue in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Elizabeth Lecron and Vincent Armstrong were arrested for plotting explosives in Toledo, Ohio, and had written to Roof. A neo-Nazi subculture called the "Bowl Gang" glorifies him. On the 24th of September 2017, Emanuel K. Samson, who is Black, shot up a church, killing a woman and wounding seven others. He left a note referring to Roof.

  On the 18th of June, flags across South Carolina flew at half-staff, but not the Confederate battle flag beside the State House. State law required two-thirds of the legislature to alter it. The flagpole also had no pulley, so the flag could only be removed, never lowered.

  On the 20th of June, several thousand people protested at the State House, and an online petition passed 370,000 signatures. On the 22nd of June, Governor Haley stood with Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott and former governor Mark Sanford. She said the flag was "an integral part of our past" but "does not represent the future." At Pinckney's funeral, Obama said, "By taking down that flag we express God's grace. But I don't think God wants us to stop there."

  The Senate voted on the 6th of July. After 13 hours of debate, the House passed the bill 94-20 on the 9th of July, and Haley signed it. On the 10th of July the flag came down for the last time, headed for a museum.

  On the 23rd of June, Wal-Mart, Amazon.com, Sears Holding Corporation and eBay announced they would stop selling Confederate flag merchandise. Warner Bros. halted production of "General Lee" toy cars. New Orleans moved to remove four Confederate memorials, and by the 11th of May 2017 the Battle of Liberty Place Monument and the Jefferson Davis Monument were gone.

  Americans stayed divided over the flag. A 2015 survey found 57% called it Southern pride rather than racism, close to 59% in 2000. In the South, though, 75% of whites called it a symbol of pride, and 75% of Black respondents said it stood for racism.

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