When he was a young newspaper man, Jack Bass got an assignment: Cover Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech.
Bass, newly hired by the Charlotte Observer, joined others at the old church to hear the Atlanta pastor. They filled the sanctuary where other challenges had been made, other dreams shared. The atmosphere, Bass recalled, was electric.
That church? Emanuel A.M.E., in the heart of downtown Charleston.
"People were so excited" to hear King speak, said Bass, who left journalism to teach history at the College of Charleston.
The speech underscores just how large Emanuel looms in history — not just in Charleston, but across the state and nation. The church, where a gunman killed nine Wednesday night, stands as a symbol of social activism.
The church has been saving souls for nearly two centuries. It is one of the oldest black churches in the South. It has been burned to the ground and rebuilt. It has been knocked flat and risen again. A hurricane took away its steeple, but not its heart.
The church's roots date to 1816. Its founder: Morris Brown, for whom an Atlanta college is named. Angered by his treatment at white churches, Brown broke away to create a black house of worship. An estimated 4,000 other blacks joined the free shoemaker in leaving white congregations.
The church, according its web site, soon got in trouble for challenging the established order. In 1822, officials investigated its role in a planned slave revolt. The rebellion never took place, but that didn't mean the church escaped censure: Frightened slave owners and others burned it. The congregation rebuilt, then worshiped secretly after black churches were banned in 1834.
That ban lifted in 1865. Jubilant church members called their house of worship Emanuel, Hebrew for “God is with us.”
The church moved to its present location in 1872, when church members erected a wooden house of worship. It stood until 1886, when a massive earthquake flattened the church and much of the rest of the city. As they had done in the past, church members rebuilt — this time, with brick.
They completed it in 1891: a soaring testimony to faith, with a steeple so high angels could use it as a perch. In 1989, Hurricane Hugo snatched away that spire. The church has since stood without it.
The church is noteworthy because it's always been designed and built by African-Americans, said South Carolina historian Walter B. Edgar.
"It's a magnificent building," said Edgar, a retired University of South Carolina history professor.
Its magnificence, he added, transcends mere architecture. Yes, it is a brick-and-mortar place where people pray, but its heart is its congregation, he said.
“It has been not just a structure, but a community,” said Edgar, who now hosts a popular history radio program. “It’s an important group.”
A group that, like the church, has played a role in history. In 1865, Edgar noted, recently elected S.C. Gov. James Lawrence Orr met with former slaves to discuss how the city and state would step into a new and uncertain future. They met at Emanuel.
Nearly 100 years later, another leader chose that sanctuary for a meeting. Bass, the onetime newspaper man, recalled King, the crowds, the moment.
In the echoing confines of that old building, the minister extolled the beauty of nonviolence.
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