Wednesday, June 17, 2015
Senator Clementa Pinckney sat in front of me and just to the right. I was still a Freshman and still on the back row on the Democrat side of the chamber.*
That day, as was a lot of Wednesdays, Sen. (Rev.) Pinckney left a little early to make it back to Charleston for Bible Study. He wasn’t a chatter but when he spoke you heard him. He tapped me on the shoulder and said, “See you tomorrow!” He left.
Senator Pinckney did not come back.
At around 8:15 that evening, 21 year old Dylann Roof was welcomed with open arms by a group holding their weekly prayer meeting in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church (affectionately known as Mother Emanuel) in Charleston. What that group did not know is Roof was a white supremist with a sick plan to start a race war.
The first salvo in his scheme was to massacre nine gentle souls: Senator Pinkney, Cynthia Graham Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lee Lance, Depayne Middleton-Doctor, Tywanza Sanders, Daniel L. Simmons, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton and Myra Thompson. Another church member was wounded.
By 9:45 phones were ringing throughout the senate members. Something had happened at Clem’s church. I remember talking on the phone to Antoine Seawright late into the night. Antoine, a nationally respected and accomplished Democrat adviser, was a close friend of Senator Pinckney and his family. He was crying and just kept saying “it’s bad, it’s bad.”
At the next meeting of the Senate, we all gathered outside the chamber, walked in together, formed a circle holding hands and prayed. It was a somber day, a difficult and heartbreaking day. Senator Pinckney’s desk was draped in black with a single white rose in a vase. Oddly, I remember it being so surreal I can hardly recall it!
The next week Senator Pinckney’s body and family come to the back side of the Capital by horse and carriage because the confederate flag still flew in front of the Statehouse. His body was carried up the stairs and into the rotunda as Senators took turns standing watch at the foot of the casket.
Nine years later and the memories are fresh yet almost impossible to grasp. They are especially hard when you realize nine people lost their lives over hate and the murderer used the confederate flag as a symbol of that hate. A symbol so venerated by so many South Carolinians was a calling card for the slaughter of kind, gentle and loving people who were simply gathered to worship.
But the flag is not to blame for what Dylann Roof did. He is. Whether he adopted the flag with a demented philosophy to justify his actions is not the argument to make. On that day he was the Master of Hate. And, in the end, he lost.
I went to the funeral and watched the family and the many friends. I listened to President Barack Obama sing “Amazing Grace” and deliver an remarkable eulogy. There were no disagreements that day. No politics. No “isms” or “ists.” There was love and sadness. Amity and anguish.
I said Roof lost in his campaign of hate.
In December 2016, Dylann Roof was convicted of 33 federal hate crimes and murder charges. On January 10, 2017, he was sentenced to death by lethal injection for those crimes. Roof was separately charged with nine counts of murder in the South Carolina state courts, to which he pleaded guilty in April of that year in order to avoid receiving a second death sentence. As a result, he was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. [Wikipedia]
But it wasn’t the imprisonment and nationally historic recognition as an evil, murderous, racist monster that was Dylann Roof’s greatest loss. It was the resultant victory. You see, nothing in my memory was so racially galvanizing, so socially significant as the far too long – and painful – awakening as the Mother Emmanuel Massacre. Though it was too high a price to pay, the murders slapped South Carolina in her metaphorical face and said “ENOUGH!”
Racism, particularly violent racism, is real and has no place in the Palmetto State. The Dylann Roofs are not who we are. We can be proud of our culture without embracing irrational and un-Christian renditions of her history. What Dylann Roof tried to exalt, was, ultimately, condemned.
Yet…
Clementa Pinckney was a major proponent of the a state hate crimes bill. To this day South Carolina is one of only two states that don’t allow for enhanced penalties if a crime is determinted to have been motivated by hate.
Twice the Clementa C. Pinckney Hate Crimes Act cleared the House but stalled in the Senate, including this year. I was one of the minority who wanted to bring the bill to floor.
Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey has said;
“There’s nothing in that (hate crimes) bill that would have protected those nine people. There’s nothing in that bill that would have increased the punishment that the murderer received. Under state law, that guy was eligible for the death penalty. What penalty would you have given in addition to that?”
Senator Massey has been unable to muster the necessary votes in the Republican caucus to bring the bill to debate on the floor, but he is right. A hate crime law would not have stopped Dylann Roof or even given him pause that night in Charleston. And maybe it wouldn’t have added to his sentence, but sometimes laws aren’t just about deterrence or even penance. Sometimes a law is a message, a declaration that there are things citizens especially abhor and behaviors considered intolerable.
I pray the law is passed soon, the message is received and, like Dylann Roof, hatred can be locked away where it can do no harm.
*I was the only female in the Senate at the time. Pinckney’s death led to a special election that brought Senator Bright Matthews to the Chamber, something that would have pleased Clementa.
WHILE I BREATHE 