Charleston shooting hits close to home

Timothy Taylor of Roxbury marched on Saturday with Mass Action Against Police Brutality. Ongoing discussions of race and policing dovetailed with city-wide reflections on tlast week’s deadly shooting in a black church in Charleston.

In the week since Dylann Roof’s vicious attack on a black church in South Carolina that left nine people dead, members of the Boston community have come together to respond the carnage and share their views on what it means for American race relations on a broader scale.

At a prayer vigil in Roxbury last Friday night, church members touched on the topic of forgiveness — a point of national discussion following the public displays of forgiveness for Roof from some of his victims’ families — while also emphasizing the need for communal strength and vigilance in the face of difficult times.

Edna Humphrey, chairperson of the trustees for Pleasant Hill Baptist Church, said that she had family members in South Carolina who had known some of the victims.

“It had quite a toll,” she said of the shooting. “You think you’re safe in God’s house.”

“But we have to be forgiving, if we are Christians,” she added. “And pray for the person that did it.”

Reverend Miniard Culpepper of Pleasant Hill called for prayer for the victims’ families and even for Roof, while emphasizing the psychological impact of the massacre.

“These brutal murders remind us that we are never to put down our guard against racism and hatred – even in the house of prayer,” he said. “Racism and hatred and evil is alive and well in the United States of America. … Back in the ‘60s, when we were fighting for equal rights — those same rights we fought for, we find ourselves fighting the same battles again.”

The vigil included ministers from several local churches that belong to the Boston Baptist Minister’s Conference, as well as Minister Rodney Muhammad of the Nation of Islam, who called for vigilance.

“Jesus said, ‘Watch as well as pray,’” he said, addressing the small circle of about twenty people gathered on the church lawn. He noted that the minister was standing with his back to the street — a potential gap in security.

“The pastor should never have his back toward the street,” he said, appointing a man to be on security duty. And if something were to happen, he said, “the men take care of business. … Jesus is no ‘punktified’ messenger of God — he’s a revolutionary.”

The note about security came as Boston police officers were deployed to guard churches in Dorchester and Roxbury in particular this past weekend — a sign of the tense atmosphere in the wake of an attack that had many drawing comparisons to the 1963 Birmingham church bombing.

Themes converge

On Saturday, a march organized by the group Mass Action Against Police Brutality in honor of Juneteenth — which commemorates the official end of slavery in Texas in 1865 – and against racially motivated police violence against civilians included references to the Charleston shooting.

“They can arrest Dylann Roof, who killed nine people in a church…and he still lives to see his day in court,” said organizer Brock Satter, addressing the crowd of about 150 people before the march began from Dudley Square to Franklin Park. He contrasted that outcome to the recent Boston police shooting of

Usaamah Rahim, whom authorities have said was plotting an attack on police officers.

“Usaamah Rahim committed no crime,” he said. “They have some kind of story that he was intending to. … If you’re white, you see your day in court.”

“We stand with the [Rahim] family in demanding a full investigation,” he added.

“They can do what they do, and never get called on it,” said organizer Tahia Bell-Sykes, referring to police officers, as she stood before the crowd. “They want to be judge, jury and executioner on the streets where we live.”

In a conversation with the Banner before the march, group organizer Clay Brown added his thoughts.

“The judge [James Gosnell] saying [Roof’s] family is a victim, the steadfastness of them defending the Confederate flag – it just shows you how deep white supremacy and racism runs,” he said.

He said he was frustrated by the national media coverage of the attack.

“Media coverage tells me what I already knew – but it’s more fuel for me,” he said. “It is terrorism,” he added firmly, touching on a criticism that some have raised about the reluctance by media outlets to label the church shooting as a domestic terror attack.

“We invade other countries, and bomb weddings and fly drones over their land for acts of terror against Americans,” he said. “Americans have just been targeted, and the response has been lukewarm.”

Federal Bureau of Investigations director James Comey declined during a Saturday afternoon press conference to label Roof’s shooting as an of terrorism.

“Terrorism is [an] act of violence…to try to influence a public body or citizenry, so it’s more of a political act,” he said at the press conference. “And again, based on what I know so far, I don’t see it as a political act.”

Trauma trigger

Councilor Ayanna Pressley, who has been outspoken on issues of community violence and trauma, spoke with the Banner about her view of the shooting’s impact, echoing some of the same themes raised by community members. She described the cloud the shooting had left over her, even in the midst of end-of-the-year celebrations like graduations.

“I’ve had a preoccupied sadness,” she said. “I couldn’t initially pinpoint what it was, but I know now it was what happened in Charleston. Because what happened in Charleston is a trauma trigger — not just for me, or for the Commonwealth, but especially for black Americans. The bearing down, the collective impact of violence. We see it in our cities, and in the racism that continues to persist.”

She said that the shooting, as well as the national dialogue surrounding it, had an impact.

“It is infuriating that anyone could question the motives of the shooting,” she said, referring to speculation by some that Roof was motivated by something other than racial hatred — either mental illness or anti-Christian sentiments. On Saturday morning, a manifesto allegedly written by Roof surfaced online, in which the writer details a hatred for African Americans and a belief in white superiority.

“It is a hate crime, it is domestic terrorism,” Pressley said.

She said the crime was especially difficult to process in the midst of other racial inequalities that persist.

“This was a tragedy — but black America is dying slowly every day. We’re at the bottom of all outcomes [in] education, health, economics. … The weight of all this is bearing down on black America.”

Still, she ended with a nod to strength in the face of difficulty.

“What defines my blackness is not those tragedies, but our triumphs over those, and our resilience as a people,” she said.