ABOUT CHARLESTON
Population: City 128,000; Metro area is 697,439
Rank: 78th, behind Akron, Ohio and ahead of Springfiled, Mass.
Demographics: 67 percent white; 26 percent African-American
Median household income: $49,299
Median home price: $251,600
Major industries: Tourism; manufacturing
Mayor: Democrat Joe Riley
Source: U.S. Census Data
Digging Deep. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has had five journalists in Charleston, S.C. covering the massacre and the fallout to bring home what it means to our nation and our neighboring state. Visit AJC.com and MyAJC.com for breaking news and special coverage of this tragedy.
The Civil War ignited in these coastal lowlands, the opening shots fired in the harbor at Fort Sumter. Yet Charleston has transformed from those early days fomenting secession, to a popular, mainstream tourist draw — blending reverently preserved, antebellum heritage with modern tolerance.
This week, the port city added a dark chapter to its complicated history as it was rocked by a racially-motivated massacre. Nine worshipers were gunned down in a Bible study session at one of the nation’s oldest black churches. It has catapulted Charleston to the epicenter of a freewheeling and tense national conversation on race.
In a racist website manifesto that surfaced Saturday accused shooter Dylann Roof — pictured casually hoisting a Confederate flag and a gun — appears to make clear his choice of a target in the city was no accident.
“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. We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.”
Law enforcement had not confirmed late Saturday whether the words are his. That Roof drove nearly two hours from his Lexington, S.C. home to get to Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston’s historic district is beyond dispute.
As a result, Charleston seems unlikely to exit the spotlight anytime soon. There will be nine funerals for the national media to cover. And with presidential campaign season in full swing, candidates will be traipsing regularly through the pivotal early primary state, guaranteeing that the issues raised by the rampage at Emanuel will get a full public airing.
If Ferguson, Mo., was exhibit A on the explosive potential of an overwhelmingly white police force policing a predominantly black town and Baltimore showed how combustible desperate conditions are in poor, big city America, then Charleston demonstrates the destructive power of raw, homegrown hate. And it suggests that for all the progress in the glossy New South, its violent racial history is alive.
“The Confederate flag, a flag of white supremacy flies on the South Carolina Statehouse grounds along with a statute of white supremacist ‘Pitchfolk’ Ben Tillman. Countless streets and buildings are named after Confederate heroes. The president of the College of Charleston routinely dresses up as a Confederate general,” said Kevin Alexander Gray, a South Carolina civil rights activist who has written on race in the state.
“This is where we live and what is ingrained everyday in our psyche without apology.”
DEBATE OVER CONFEDERATE FLAG EMERGES
With the alleged shooter behind bars charged with nine counts of murder, protesters on Saturday trained their anger at the most visible emblem of those scars: the Confederate battle flag still flying on the grounds of the South Carolina state Capitol. While the state and American flags were lowered to half staff in the shooting’s aftermath, the stars and bars continue to ripple atop a flagpole in what critics said is a stinging, racist rebuke to the dead, all of them African-American. Roof reportedly said he wanted to start a race war.
The shooting, and Roof’s alleged motivations, put the battle flag back into the public arena. Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Saturday tweeted that the flag should come down from the South Carolina Statehouse grounds. Russell Moore, of Mississippi, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention said the same in an op-ed published by The Washington Post.
Jason Isbell, a singer-song writer from Alabama who has become one of the South’s leading voices on embracing the region’s unique way of life while challenging its damaging past and sometimes frustrating present, explained why the flag is a problem.
“That particular symbol has caused far more pain than it’s worth,” Isbell told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The love that a white southerner feels for the rebel flag pales in comparison with the pain that flag can cause. It’s past time to let it go.”
But removing the flag from the Statehouse grounds is no simple task. Under the 2000 compromise that moved it from atop the copper dome of the Statehouse to the northern edge of the grounds, only a two-thirds vote of both the House and Senate can move it again. The South Carolina Legislature does not reconvene until January — six long months for the issue to cool back to the same simmer at which it’s been kept for a generation.
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, rejected the idea that the Confederate flag played any role in the massacre. While he’s open to a fresh debate, Graham was a supporter of the hard-won compromise that keeps it on the State House grounds.
“To revisit that decision would be fine with me, but this is part of who we are,” Graham said.
More than a thousand people protested on the Capitol grounds in Columbia on Saturday night calling on South Carolina legislators to take down the flag.
Thomas Washington Jr.’s father was among those who marched on the Statehouse when the flag was removed from the dome in 2000.
Now, Washington Jr., said he was here to help finish the job of moving it from the grounds.
“I’m not saving anything for the swim back,” he said. “Just being here and being brown helps.”
WHERE THE OLD AND THE NEW LIVE
The Charleston area had been thrust in the national conversation on race and policing when, earlier this year, a police officer shot and killed Walter Scott, an unarmed black man, running from a traffic stop in nearby North Charleston.
Local law enforcement, armed with video of the shooting, swiftly arrested and charged the officer, Michael Slager. Slager and Roof are now both in protective custody inside the Charleston County Detention Center.
Nonetheless, the twin events could incite fresh racial tensions.
“This is going to add to it a little,” said Angela Anderson, who attended a prayer vigil in Charleston Friday night.
Like many cities in the Deep South — Atlanta among them — Charleston has sought to capitalize on its rich past even as it has tried to move on from it.
An estimated 40 percent of all enslaved Africans shipped to America passed through Charleston and city’s former slave market stands as a popular tourist draw. Today, money is being raised to erect a multimillion dollar International African American Museum on the site. The graceful architecture of the homes evokes an earlier time. But Walter B. Edgar, a retired history professor at the University of South Carolina, noted that downtown Charleston is a juxtaposition of the old and new.
“You’ve got the church (Emanuel AME) on Calhoun Street,” he said. “And three blocks away is Charleston’s nightlife, the bar district.”
City Councilman William Dudley Gregorie noted the city is the seat of the Confederacy.
“But our city has evolved,” he explained.
In 2009, Gregorie, who is black, was elected to the nonpartisan city council representing a district that is about 75 percent white. He beat three white opponents without a runoff.
“That tells you this city has evolved and continues to evolve,” Gregorie said. “They voted for the son of a slave.”
A CITY UNITED
And if Roof’s aim was to spark a race war, memorial services erupting in Charleston and beyond show if anything the shooting has, at least temporarily, brought the races together.
A vigil Friday night in Charleston, drew a mostly white crowd, including Graham. In Atlanta on Saturday afternoon, an interracial prayer service took place at Peachtreee Christian Church, an influential midtown church typically composed of mostly white parishioners.
“We are left grasping for the right words. Accurate words. Terrorism. Murder. Racism. But a word’s vocation is often times not enough to describe reality,” said Jarrod Longbons, the church’s senior minister. “So I’m exploring other words at the moment.”
But perhaps the most moving moments were the unscripted ones,
Avis Williams, 51, and Barry W. Owens, 72, showed up separately outside Emanuel AME on Friday morning. Standing in the heat, both bowed their heads a few feet apart and prayed. When Owens pulled a small Bible from his jacket pocket, he asked Williams if he could share God’s word with her.
Owens, who is white, and Williams, who is black, stood on the sidewalk in front of the police tape as Williams read from Revelations Chapter 6, verses 9 through 11. The verses describe how Christian martyrs will be sacrificed for their beliefs but will earn a place in Heaven.
“And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?”
Afterward, Williams, who lives in nearby James Island, said this community is well suited to persevere.
“We pull together,” she said. “We help each other. We cry on one another’s shoulders.”
Owens said the “Holy City” has a deep love of God. While many by now know the history of Emanuel AME and the deep roots Christianity has in Charleston, other faiths have long called Charleston home.
Jews first settled here in 1695. As late as 1820, according to the Encyclopedia of Southern Jewish Communities, Charleston was home to the largest Jewish community in the country.
“People of Charleston are people with a genuine love for the Lord,” Owens said.
Now, people here have two choices, he said.
“You either turn bitter or better,” Owens said. “If you turn to the Lord you’ll be better. I believe Charleston will be better.”
About the Author
