Charleston church shooting

On June 17, 2015, a 21-year-old white man entered one of the most historic Black churches in the United States, Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, sat among a dozen Black parishioners for Bible study, then opened fire, killing nine of them. At the time it was the deadliest hate crime at an American house of worship.

The shooting

The shooter was 21-year-old Dylann Roof, who, motivated by white supremacist ideology, planned and carried out a mass shooting at the historically Black African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Roof was sentenced to death in 2017.

Roof became outraged at the reaction to the 2012 shooting of Black teenager Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, who was of Peruvian descent. Based on his own statements, those of friends or relatives, and his website and personal manifestos, Roof wanted to address what he called “Black on white crime,” which he felt was underreported. He developed a white supremacist ideology and decided to act in a way that he hoped would provoke a race war. He selected Charleston as the best target for his purposes because of its historical significance and large Black population. (In 2015, about 23 percent of Charleston residents were Black, according to the Census Bureau.) He considered attacking College of Charleston before settling on the church affectionately known as “Mother Emanuel,” home to the oldest Black congregation in the South. He purchased a .45-caliber handgun shortly after his 21st birthday, a purchase that was technically illegal because of his arrest on narcotics possession charges earlier in the year. However, the background check had not been completed by the end of the three-day waiting period required for gun purchases in South Carolina, and the store owner was not legally bound to wait for its completion before selling Roof a gun. Situations such as this have become known as the “Charleston loophole.”

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Roof went to the church on the evening of June 17 and joined a group of 12 parishioners for a Bible study. The church’s pastor, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, welcomed Roof, handing him a Bible and a study guide. He sat quietly in a pew for some 45 minutes. As the session was drawing to a close, Roof began shooting, reloading his gun multiple times and firing 77 shots in all, killing nine congregants. Felicia Sanders survived by pretending to be dead, simultaneously saving her granddaughter who was hiding beneath her. Sanders’s son and aunt died in the shooting. As Roof fired, he made racist statements before telling Polly Sheppard, whom he believed to be the only survivor, that he was leaving her alive as a witness. Roof then left the church and fled to North Carolina, where he was arrested the next day.

The History of “Mother Emanuel”

• About 1816: Frustrated by discrimination at segregated Charleston churches, Morris Brown founds his own church. It would become Mother Emanuel.
• 1822: A slave rebellion planned at the church is uncovered, and the church is burned.
• Post Civil War: The church, now named Emanuel, is reconstituted on a site half a mile from Fort Sumter.
• 1886: An earthquake destroys the wooden church, leading to the construction of the building that still stands today.
• 1909: Booker T. Washington speaks at the church, which is crowded with Black and white faithful.
• 1962: Martin Luther King, Jr., speaks from the pulpit in support of voting rights.
• 1969: Coretta Scott King leads a march as part of a union-organizing protest.
• 2015: Pres. Barack Obama eulogizes slain pastor, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney.

Political impact

The shooting took place as candidates were campaigning for the South Carolina primary in the 2016 presidential election, and it had an immediate political and ideological impact. The revelation of Roof’s racist motivation sparked public discourse about the legacy of racism in America and the continued prevalence of white supremacist ideology. A Confederate flag had been on the grounds of the South Carolina statehouse since 1961, and its continued display became a flash point. After multiple politicians of both parties voiced their support for the removal of the flag, the South Carolina legislature voted to remove it on July 7. Three days later, 23 days after the Charleston church shooting, Republican Gov. Nikki Haley presided over a ceremony removing the flag and transporting it to a Confederacy museum. Haley stood during the ceremony with members of the families of the Charleston church shooting victims, and she signed the legislation for its removal using nine pens to stand for the nine victims, who had come to be known as the “Emanuel Nine.”

The controversy around the removal of the Confederate flag was one of several that became salient in the aftermath of the shooting. There was also debate over whether the shooter’s actions should be treated as an instance of anti-Black domestic terrorism, as well as whether it should be considered part of the history of lynching in the South. The shooter’s mental state was publicly debated, and the loophole that had allowed him to purchase the gun used in the massacre formed the basis of a lawsuit brought by the families of the Emanuel Nine against the FBI. The lawsuit was settled in 2021.

The trial

In December 2016 a jury convicted Roof of 33 federal charges including hate crimes, murder, obstruction of religious exercise, and firearms charges. In January 2017 the same jury sentenced him to death, making him the first person sentenced to death for federal hate crimes. He also faced state charges, to which he pleaded guilty in 2017.

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Toward the end of the federal trial, conflict emerged between Roof and his lawyers over whether to introduce evidence regarding Roof’s mental competency. Roof even temporarily fired his lawyers over his resistance to introducing such evidence and thus represented himself during sentencing. Roof’s lawyers argued that his convictions and death sentences should therefore be vacated and his case returned to the courts, this time to include an evaluation of his mental competency. However, in 2021 the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the original conviction. In 2022 the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from Roof of that Court’s decision.

In 2021 the Justice Department began a review of its policies and procedures surrounding execution, and all federal executions were paused until the completion of the review. At the end of his term, Pres. Joe Biden commuted the sentences of most people on federal death row. He made exceptions for Roof, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Tree of Life synagogue shooter Robert Bowers, because they were convicted of acts of terrorism or hate. Roof remains on death row at the Terre Haute Federal Prison in Indiana.

Remembering the victims

Extensive efforts have been made to honor the memories of the Emanuel Nine beyond the removal of the Confederate flag. Pres. Barack Obama delivered a moving eulogy for Pinckney, and in 2021 the Amazing Grace Park was dedicated to his memory. Scholarship funds and foundations were established in the names of victims. A documentary about the shooting, titled Emanuel, was released in 2019. In 2025 Mother Emanuel, a history of the church and the shooting, by Kevin Sack was published. A permanent memorial to the Emanuel Nine on the grounds of Mother Emanuel church is to be completed in 2026.

Those killed in the shooting were:

• The Rev. Clementa Pinckney, 41, was the pastor of Mother Emanuel and a state senator.
• Cynthia Hurd, 54, had worked at the Charleston County Public Library for more than 30 years.
• Tywanza Sanders, 26, worked as a barber and was the son of survivor Felicia Sanders.
• Sharonda Singleton, 45, was a high-school track coach.
• The Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, 49, worked at Southern Wesleyan University.
• The Rev. Daniel Simmons, 74, was a retired pastor.
• Susan Jackson, 87, was a longtime church choir member and the aunt of survivor Felicia Sanders.
• Ethel Lance, 70, was a longtime parishioner.
• The Rev. Myra Thompson, 59, was leading the Bible study at Mother Emanuel for the first time.