Opinion
Emanuel AME and the Buoyancy of Hope
“Challenging People to Shape
a Better Future Now”
B ernie F oster
Founder/Publisher
B oBBie D ore F oster
Executive Editor
J erry F oster
Advertising Manager
C hristen M C C urDy
News Editor
P atriCia i rvin
Graphic Designer
a rashi y oung
D onovan M. s Mith
Reporters
M oniCa J. F oster
Seattle Office Coordinator
J ulie K eeFe
s usan F rieD
Photographers
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R
ev. Clementa Pinckney and
his fellow congregants of
Charleston’s Emanuel Af-
rican Methodist Episcopal Church
in Charleston, S.C. gathered as
usual in the historic edifice June
17 for their Wednesday evening
prayer service. They came, as al-
ways, to refresh their religious
faith, to testify and bear witness
to the importance of living a life
of righteousness and to extend to
all including the stranger in their
midst their welcome and their
trust.
How could they know that he
represented a monstrous evil that
would consume them?
So, once again, American so-
ciety has been wounded by the
dangerous forces of hatred and
violence that have always shad-
owed the gleaming idealism of the
American Creed.
As usual, when the mask of
American innocence slips, the
crowd that loves to glibly boast
of “American exceptionalism” ran
for cover. Fox News propagan-
dists led the way in desperately
fleeing from the clear evidence
of Dylann Roof’s racism. Instead,
they claimed he was striking
against Christianity and “religious
freedom.” Revealingly, the same
pose was adopted by the Internet’s
overtly white-supremacist web-
sites and the trolls of the right-
wing Twitter mob.
But Dylann Roof’s own words
and Facebook posts leave no
doubt of his motivation—and
leave no room for the cowardice
of not confronting them.
President Obama gave voice to
“the heartache and the sadness and
the anger” the massacre provoked
Lee A.
Daniels
NNPA
Columnist
in decent people when he said,
“we as a country will have to reck-
on with the fact that this type of
mass violence does not happen in
other advanced countries … with
this kind of frequency. And it is in
our power to do something about
it … the politics in [Washington]
hope,” said the President, quoting
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
One truth lies in our learning
something of the very people – a
cross-section of the American
people – who were gunned down.
Their being lost to the whirlwind
of evil shouldn’t be allowed to
obscure their fundamental good-
ness and commitment to Christi-
anity’s most cherished precepts
– as shown in their families’
heart-rending declarations of for-
giveness toward Roof. “We are
the family that love built,” said
Bethane Middleton-Brown, sister
of DePayne Middleton-Doctor,
during the June 19 court hearing
Dylann Roof’s own words and
Facebook posts leave no doubt of his
motivation — and leave no room for
the cowardice of not confronting them
foreclose a lot of those avenues
right now. But it would be wrong
for us not to acknowledge it. At
some point, it’s going to be im-
portant for the American people
to come to grips with it, and for
us to be able to shift how we think
about the issue of gun violence
collectively.”
In those words the president
spoke, substitute for “gun vio-
lence” the words “slavery” or “rac-
ism” and you have why, for many
Black Americans, the terrorist at-
tack at Emanuel AME scourged a
profound historically-rooted pain.
Yet even in this moment of grief,
we ought to recognize the several
truths that offer “the buoyancy of
on the charges against Roof. Mid-
dleton-Brown said her family has
no room for hate in their hearts,
before adding, “I also thank God I
won’t be around when your judg-
ment days comes with him.”
The tragedy has also under-
scored the real and symbolic
meaning to Black Americans of
the Black Church. It was and re-
mains our piece of the rock: A
refuge against the storm of rac-
ism and malicious indifference
that has swirled about us outside
its walls. A vault that has held
the treasures of fellowship and
the space to practice communal
leadership as well as religious
faith. And an armory where Black
Americans forged and buffed to
a luminous shine both their civic
faith in the American Ideal and the
weapon — nonviolent protest —
they would use to demand the full
measure of their American citizen-
ship.
Another insight is that Emanuel
AME is “historic” not just because
of its early 19th-century founding,
but because it met again and again
the challenge of being a full-ser-
vice Black communal institution.
In that regard, Mother Emanuel
is, thankfully, far from unique.
Innumerable Black communities
across the country have a “Moth-
er Church” of this or that Protes-
tant denomination whose roots go
back to at least the late 1800s.
Another bright light the tragedy
cannot extinguish was the imme-
diate rush of people of all back-
grounds to stand in solidarity with
the congregants of Mother Eman-
uel. That was most dramatically il-
lustrated by the actions of Debbie
Dills and Todd Frady, two white
North Carolinians whose call to a
local police officer in the morning
of June 18 directly led to Dylann
Roof’s capture. Dills, who spot-
ted Roof in his car while she was
driving to her job at Frady’s florist
shop, said, “I saw the news cov-
erage last night. … Since it hap-
pened I was praying for them and
the church. I was in the right place
at the right time that the Lord puts
you.”
That shining compassion, sense
of kinship and determination to
redeem a terrible wrong justifies
“the buoyancy of hope” that has
always fueled Black Americans’
faith in America and in their march
toward the future.
Left and Right Converge on Justice Reform
W
hile social change for
some may appear to be
inevitable, it does not
happen by osmosis, and it does not
occur without a focused effort led
by those who are not restrained by
the fears of social transformation.
An effective reform of the system
of laws, courts, policies and in-
stitutions defined as the criminal
justice system in the United States
of America requires more than a
principled public debate.
What is needed today with a re-
newed sense of urgency, beyond
the all-too-frequent expressions of
justifiable outrage and protest in
response to videotaped incidents
of police brutality, is a commit-
ted, bipartisan, well-resourced na-
tionwide criminal justice reform
movement. Black lives do matter.
In fact, all lives matter.
As President and CEO of the
National Newspaper Publishers
Association (NNPA), the nation’s
oldest and largest trade associa-
tion of African American-owned
newspapers, we reach more than
20 million readers per week
through 205 affiliated local and
regional print and digital media
companies.
The issues of mass incarcera-
tion, overcriminalization, prose-
cutorial and police misconduct,
equal justice, alternative sentenc-
ing, recidivism and judicial dys-
function are all serious problems
that are having a severe negative
Page 2 June 24, 2015 The Portland and Seattle Skanner
Benjamin F.
Chavis, Jr.
NNPA
President and
CEO
impact, in particular, on the qual-
ity of life of African Americans.
What is required today, however,
is a multiracial coalition to ensure
that a successful reform move-
ment is representative of the inter-
ests of all Americans.
state and federal levels toward
equal justice for all. Now we need
to rebuild and expand the move-
ment to reform criminal justice.
I also know what it is like to be
unjustly sentenced and incarcer-
ated in a prison system that dehu-
manizes both the imprisoned and
those in charge of vastly deterio-
rating overcrowded penal institu-
tions.
I was a member of the Wilming-
ton 10, a group of civil rights ac-
tivists who were unjustly impris-
oned for a combined sentenced of
282 years for standing up for the
rights of equal education for Af-
rican American students in Wilm-
‘An injustice anywhere is a threat to
justice everywhere’
—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
I know something about the
movement-building process, dat-
ing back to my early days in the
1960s as a youth coordinator in
my home state of North Carolina
for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and
the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference. (SCLC).
Dr. King, Jr. was a master move-
ment builder. I learned firsthand
from witnessing how Dr. King
fused together a diverse coalition
of intergenerational leaders to
bring about change at the local,
ington, N.C. in the 1970s. Today,
there are millions of people who
not only want to see changes in the
criminal justice system, but also
are willing to join and support the
emergence of a national “Crim-
inal Justice Reform Movement”
(CJRM).
My columns for the NNPA have
always been about speaking truth
to power in the vein of Frederick
Douglass and W.E.B. DuBois, two
pioneering editors who knew the
power of words. Yet today, we
must also dare to speak the truth
to ourselves. We must participate
in helping to build this important
reform movement.
Thus, it is why without any hes-
itation that I am hereby publicly
stating my endorsement of the
coalition-building efforts of the
American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU), National Association
of Criminal Defense Lawyers
(NACDL), Charles Koch Insti-
tute and Koch Industries, Coali-
tion for Public Safety, Center for
American Progress, Leadership
Conference on Civil Rights, and
other national and regional orga-
nizations that have committed to
support various criminal justice
reform efforts. I believe it is now
a propitious time to work together
to establish a national bipartisan
reform movement.
I was very interested and encour-
aged to learn that the controversial
Koch Industries has been involved
in the issues of overcriminaliza-
tion and criminal justice reform
for years. Reforming the criminal
justice system is not a concern to
be constrained to the left or to the
right on the political spectrum.
The respect for the moral digni-
ty and wellbeing of every person,
without the filter of race, class, re-
ligion or any other discriminating
factor, is a paramount principle
that has to be maintained in a so-
ciety that strives to strengthen the
inclusiveness of its democracy.