In the Aftermath of the Emanuel Nine in the September
For Immediate Release: September 21, 2015 Press Contacts: Natalie Raabe, (212) 286-6591 Molly Erman, (212) 286-7936 Adrea Piazza, (212) 286-4255 In the Aftermath of the Emanuel Nine In the September 28, 2015, issue of The New Yorker, in “Blood at the Root” (p. 26), David Remnick travels to Charleston, South Caro- lina, and explores the city’s resistance and resilience in the aftermath of the June murders of nine people at Emanuel A.M.E. Church. Like many people in Charleston, Pastor Norvel Goff, Sr., at Emanuel, says that members of the community remain in shock and immense pain “(‘post-traumatic-stress syndrome’ was the term they often used), but they were alive, and feeling joy in their pews—and at their jobs, and at their Bible classes and dinner tables and Sunday strolls—because of the depth of their spiritual lives,” Remnick writes. “This was the way of a church that had been around since the days when enslaved black men and women, in a quest for safety, community, dignity, co- hesion, empowerment, ritual, and peace, broke from white churches and built ‘invisible’ institutions, sometimes called ‘hush harbors.’ ” The black church, even as it has changed, aged, and, in some places, lost ground to mega-churches, Remnick writes, remains a powerful insti- tution of black life, and of black political influence. The families of the Emanuel Nine shocked the nation with their message of forgive- ness at the killer Dylann Roof ’s hearing the day after the murders. That forgiveness is hard to understand for anyone “who hasn’t had to cope with that kind of powerlessness,” James H.
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