Clementa Pinckney the Rev of Emanuel church killed in Charleston shooting had driven for two hours to get to the Bible study class that was to result in the loss of his life along with 8 others in the hands of Dylann Roof,a 21 yr old man with fascination for White Supremacist regime.
The Rev. Clementa Pinckney knew the responsibility he was assuming when he became pastor of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in 2010. Known as “Mother Emanuel,” the church in
downtown Charleston, S.C., has one of the largest black congregations in the South and a storied history stretching back two centuries.
“I hope I can live up to the faith that has been put in me to do a good job,” Mr. Pinckney said in his rich baritone, recalled Darrell Jackson, a fellow pastor who served in the South Carolina Senate with the 41-year-old Mr. Pinckney, the married father of two daughters.
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| Clementa Pinckney as a 25 year old member of South Carolina house of reps. |
On Wednesday, after securing more foster-care funding at a state budget hearing in Columbia, Mr. Pinckney drove two hours to Charleston for Emanuel’s regular Wednesday supper and Bible study. There, in the Gothic Revival-style church, authorities say 21-year-old Dylann Roof sat in on Bible study for an hour before gunning him down, along with eight other African-American worshipers.
Mr. Roof was arrested Thursday. Charges weren’t yet announced and he hasn’t entered a plea.
Colleagues say Mr. Pinckney ministered to the poor and dispossessed and backed legislation aimed at improving their lives. In April he spoke to urge fellow senators to require police officers to wear body cameras after Walter Scott, an unarmed black man, was fatally shot by a white officer in North Charleston.
Mr. Jackson said he hopes something good will come of the church massacre. “Maybe the tragic death of such an awesome young man will bring a sense of racial reconciliation that perhaps his life or legislative service could not do alone,” he said.
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| Clementa Pinckney in Emanuel Church. |
As for Mother Emanuel, he predicted the tradition of political activism that made Mr. Pinckney a good fit as its pastor would continue.
The church’s roots date to 1791, when a religious group of free blacks and slaves organized themselves, the National Park Service says. In 1816 black members of Charleston’s Methodist Episcopal church formed a separate congregation, and in 1822 Denmark Vesey, a church founder and former slave, plotted a slave revolt.
Among his grievances were laws that kept black worshipers from meeting after dark, said Julius H. Bailey, a religious studies professor at the University of Redlands in California.
Vesey and 34 others were executed when the plan was uncovered, and the church was burned down, according to the park service. Black churches were later outlawed, forcing the congregation to meet secretly. In 1865, the year the Civil War ended, the church adopted the name Emanuel. It has occupied its current building since 1891.
Valerie Cooper, an associate professor of black church studies at Duke University, said the shooting echoes the long arc of violence aimed at black churches, including the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham church that killed four girls. The close association between black churches and the civil rights movement spurred much of that violence, she said.
From their inception, black churches were meant to give African-Americans a haven for assembling and worshiping, she said. “It is precisely this desire to create a safe place where people could feel at home that this assailant has tried to destroy,” she said.
Rev Clementa Pinckney found his religious calling and his desire for public service early in life. A biography on the church website said he “answered the call to preach” at 13 and got his first appointment to pastor at 18.
He was elected to the state House of Representatives at 23 and four years later won a seat in the Senate. His biography calls him the youngest African-American elected to the state legislature. His Senate district included parts of six counties.
He credited his wife, Jennifer, with whom he had two daughters, for being “my main supporter in my political life.” In a 1999 interview with the Savannah Morning News, he said, “She knows how much politics and being involved and helping people mean to me. She said I’d be a fool not to run.”
Mr. Pinckney came from Jasper County, home to many poor African-Americans. “When you’re a small [community] like Jasper County, to have a voice like Clementa to represent you is enormous,” said Albert Kleckley, a white county Democratic Party official and probate judge who grew up with Mr. Pinckney. “It’s a tragedy for his family and for our whole family.”
Mr. Pinckney graduated from Allen University with a degree in business administration, his biography says, and got a master’s in public administration from the University of South Carolina. He also received a master’s of divinity from the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, the church website says.
One of Mr. Pinckney’s legislative priorities was raising wages for bottom-rung hospitality workers, said Shennice Cleckley, policy director for the Legislative Black Caucus, to which Mr. Pinckney belonged.
“For him, in his prime at 41 and trying to do good for others, to be murdered in that way, in the place he loved, in the place that was his solace, just makes it that much more horrific,” said Shennice Cleckley, policy director for the Legislative Black Caucus, to which Mr. Pinckney belonged.
Mr. Pinckney’s plea for body cameras “definitely made a difference” in the legislation’s passage, said state Rep. Leon Stavrinakis, a longtime friend and fellow Democrat. He said Mr. Pinckney, a tall man he affectionately called Big C., was a “real gentle, kind, sweet guy” whose words carried weight because he wasn’t an attention-seeker.
As Mr. Pinckney wrapped up his speech on the Senate floor, he said his heart went out to Mr. Scott’s family and to the family of the officer who shot him. “The Lord teaches us to love all,” he said, “and we pray that over time that justice be done.”
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| President Obama addresses America . |
Another senseless killings yet again in America and like President Obama said,it's time America takes a look at why killings like these that does not happen with the same frequency anywhere else,keeps happening in the United States of America,
—Valerie Bauerlein contributed to this article.
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