Reporter remembers senator killed in church massacre

Before it hit the national news, my best friend, Jim Stuckey of Columbia, S.C., gave me the first bit of horrible news: a white gunman had walked into a black church in Charleston and shot eight people. (That number was later amended to nine.)

There was no word on fatalities, no word on the victims. But Jim, who had served as chief legal counsel to a former governor in South Carolina and knows many of the elected officials in the state, said the shooting took place at the church pastored by state Sen. Clem Pinckney.

Jim knew the news mattered to me on multiple fronts. I grew up in Mt. Pleasant, just across the Cooper River from Charleston. My father lives in downtown Charleston. Other relatives – my mother, my brother, aunts and uncles – are scattered throughout the Charleston area, too.

And Jim knew that, as a former reporter for The State newspaper in the state capital, Columbia, I had likely interviewed Pinckney.

Jim was right on that score. I covered the governor’s office and then higher education at The State, and I remember speaking to Pinckney on several occasions.

I can’t recall the specific stories now, but I remember he had a deep voice and a quiet, thoughtful manner. He was not a big newsmaker, largely because his style wasn’t that of a rhetorical bomb thrower.

During the eight years I worked for The State, there were are not many black men in elected positions in state government in South Carolina. And  some of those who held those positions didn’t exactly do us proud. Some were vain hucksters. Others personally embarrassed me with their ignorant, cartoonish buffoonery. Pinckney didn’t fit either of those molds.

If there was a rally, he wouldn’t be out front. But he would have helped organize it. He would have been there.

Pinckney’s district included parts of Charleston, but it stretched south and took in some of Jasper and Beaufort counties. I loved mining those areas for stories, and that sometimes meant getting a few quotes from Pinckney.

After those early texts from Jim, I clicked over from the baseball game I was watching to CNN, which finally offered some details as Charleston’s police chief and mayor held a joint press conference. They were surrounded by black men whose solemn, pained faces drove home the horror of the news the chief and mayor delivered.

Nine dead. Hate crime. Shooter still at large.

Neither the chief nor the mayor would say who was among the dead. Then my phone vibrated with a text from Jim.

“Clem Pinckney’s gone,” it read.

I slumped back in my chair, uncomprehending, terrified that the understandable rage of black Charlestonians would erupt into violence if the police or the mayor gave the indication that they weren’t horrified by what happened and weren’t fully committed to bringing the shooter to justice.

Please don’t burn Charleston, I thought. Please don’t.

My wife Shelia, who grew up an hour or so from Charleston, woke up and came downstairs. I told her what happened. She just closed her eyes and shook her head.

Together, we watched the press conference again and again.

We are new to Palm Beach County, and we mean for this beautiful place to be our home. But South Carolina is a part of us. Always will be. It’s where we raised our children. It’s where our relatives live.

We know from our time there that South Carolina can’t afford to lose men like Pinckney. The state can’t continue to serve as ground zero for racial hatred.

It’s too ugly. Too dangerous. Too expensive.

The Clem Pinckney I interviewed a few times wouldn’t have screamed that. But his death – and the deaths of the eight other people gathered at his church on Wednesday night – that should be all of the screaming we need to hear.