Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church

I am literally, as I sit right now, I am an hour and 40 minutes from where the first slaves came into the country in Charleston and the first shots of the Civil War fire, right? I am 40 miles away from where my father was shot in the Orangeburg Massacre along with 27 others and three were killed.

And, you know, we've also had Mother Emanuel in Charleston.

When I was elected, we had the Confederate flag up.

I mean, you have to understand that history, but you also have to understand that there are issues that people... that are common to people regardless.

For this trial that is not a referendum on race, we know from the beginning that ain't gonna be no all white jury here for they don't even have death penalty cases where it is a white defendant they went out and killed a black person or killed bunches of black they don't even have death penalty cases like that that is very very rare it is generally the other way around and for this case we gonna leave it up to these 12 white people to see what happens system of white supremacy and even within that again the defense made the motion about the lack of black jurors they want some black people on the trial why is that because the chair of the 514 foundation religious figure in fact they probably saw South Carolina We forgive you.

Talking about the Charleston church shooter, Mother Emanuel AME shooter.

We forgive you.

I told you she had an article in the paper right this month when jury selection began.

He's taken on landmark litigation fighting against police misconduct and officer-involved shootings.

He's held the FBI and Department of Justice accountable for negligence that enabled the 2015 mass shooting at the Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston.

The outcome was an $88 million settlement for the survivors and the families of the nine people who died in that horrific shooting.

Bakari settled another case for families against the NCAA for failing to warn football players about the long-term effects of concussions.

But alongside the facts, I want us to keep asking, what can we as believers, as communities, and as a society do to respond in faith, resilience, and wisdom? How do we protect our communities while keeping our hearts open and compassionate? In the upcoming segments in this here podcast episode, we'll dig deeper into the history of church-targeted mass shootings, ideological motivations behind these attacks, and some of the patterns researchers have observed.

We'll also talk about specific case studies like Sutherland Springs, Charleston's Mother Emanuel AME Church, and others.

to see what we can learn and how believers can watch, pray, and respond without succumbing to fear.

Mass shootings are a stark reminder of the brokenness in the world we live in.

For a while, he was the county's chief magistrate.

Some of you might remember his face because he's the magistrate who sat on the bench at the bond hearing for Dylann Roof, the man who murdered nine black worshipers at Mother Emanuel AME Church.

This man held hearings and signed warrants in his own community for three decades.

Then PayPal flagged payments linked to him going to a known seller of child sexual abuse material in the United Kingdom.