Vox - Charleston shooting: gunman kills 9 people at black churchhttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52517/voxv.png2017-01-10T16:59:29-05:00http://www.vox.com/rss/stream/85682862017-01-10T16:59:29-05:002017-01-10T16:59:29-05:00The trial of Dylann Roof for the Charleston church shooting, explained
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<img alt="Dylann Roof shows up for trial." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/G1znKoePEOsSUDvkZ5PCfRa6170=/557x0:4204x2735/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/52185211/477782304.0.jpeg" />
<figcaption>Grace Beahm/Pool via Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>He killed nine people at a black church. And a jury has now sentenced him to death.</p> <p id="XayzI0">On Tuesday, Dylann Roof was <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dylann-roof-sentence-death-penalty_us_5863ece6e4b0eb586487cb14?ncid=engmodushpmg00000004">sentenced to death</a> for the racist mass shooting attack on a black church in Charleston, South Carolina.</p>
<p id="mv4AdM">It was more than a year and a half ago that Roof walked into the church. He did not go in there to learn, pray, and worship, as the predominantly black congregants did. After sitting at the Bible study session for nearly an hour, Roof pulled out a gun and fired <a href="http://www.postandcourier.com/church_shooting/dylann-roof-trial-moves-ahead-into-new-legal-terrain/article_ac40609e-bb52-11e6-a56f-abf8eb89516a.html">77 shots</a> — killing nine people.</p>
<p id="xYWwaS">The shooting was a time of massive tragedy and mourning for the nation. People of all parties came together to condemn the horrific attack, which was motivated by Roof’s racist views. President Barack Obama, in a brief moment that would come to define his presidency, sang “Amazing Grace” at the eulogy for the victims.</p>
<div id="WWqYZN"><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IN05jVNBs64" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div>
<p id="Vr3zO5">The trial played out in two phases: In December, a jury <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/dylann-roof-found-guilty-33-counts-federal-death/story?id=44209346">convicted</a> Roof on all 33 federal counts filed against him, including hate crimes resulting in death. In January, Roof was <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dylann-roof-sentence-death-penalty_us_5863ece6e4b0eb586487cb14?ncid=engmodushpmg00000004">sentenced to death</a>. He is the first person to get the death penalty under federal hate crimes law, according to <a href="https://twitter.com/AP/status/818939789328207873">the Associated Press</a>.</p>
<p id="2e8bTe">From here, the case will likely go through several appeals and court procedures — which could take decades as Roof and his lawyers potentially exhaust all available legal avenues to prevent <a href="http://www.vox.com/cards/death-penalty-capital-punishment">capital punishment</a>.</p>
<p id="m0KlAE">The trial took some unusual turns. Some of the survivors and family of the victims actually oppose the death penalty, arguing instead for mercy. “My humanness is being broken, my humanness of wanting this man to be broken beyond punishment,” Rev. Sharon Risher, whose mother was killed in the shooting, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/26/us/death-penalty-dylann-roof-charleston.html">told the New York Times</a>. “You can’t do that if you really say that you believe in the Bible and you believe in Jesus Christ. You can’t just waver.”</p>
<aside id="VlV2b8"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Vox First Person: My mom was killed in the Charleston shooting. Executing Dylann Roof won’t bring her back.","url":"http://www.vox.com/2016/6/15/11894036/dylann-roof-death-penalty"}]}'></div></aside><p id="NWgz57">Then Roof pushed to represent himself as his own lawyer — a move that US District Judge Richard Gergel warned him was unwise. Roof ultimately <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/dylann-roof-real-test-attorney-hearing-43976657">hired back</a> his lawyers for the first phase of the trial, but opted to represent himself in the sentencing phase. Roof’s lawyers have <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/dylann-roof-real-test-attorney-hearing-43976657">suggested</a> that he is afraid of embarrassing information getting out in the trial should he not be in control of the case. (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/28/us/dylann-roof-charleston-massacre.html">Kevin Sack reported for the New York Times</a> that self-representation is rare but not unprecedented in death penalty cases, although it almost always ends badly for the defendant.)</p>
<p id="Ecxzov">There was never any real doubt as to whether Roof actually carried out the shooting. In a recorded confession, Roof <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/dylann-roof-s-videotaped-confessions-stuns-courtroom-n694036">said</a>, “I went to that church in Charleston, and I did it.” The question had long been how, exactly, he would be punished for the crime. And the answer to that question, according to a jury of Roof’s peers, should be death.</p>
<h3 id="mslBgd">Dylann Roof killed nine people at a predominantly black church</h3>
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<img alt="Dylann Roof appears in court." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/BGvqcKvOhypjD3UeH3bwYcz7_lM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7654105/480933268.jpg">
<cite>Grace Beahm/Pool via Getty Images</cite>
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<p id="g5V2fo">Roof walked into the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 17, 2015, shooting and killing nine black congregants.</p>
<p id="jwWuxg">Here's a list of the nine victims, <a href="http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20150618/PC16/150619404">reported by Andrew Knapp for the Post and Courier</a>:</p>
<ul>
<li id="LwKH0i">Clementa Pinckney, 41: state senator, church pastor, and rising star in the South Carolina Democratic Party</li>
<li id="icbmAt">Cynthia Hurd, 54: St. Andrews regional branch manager for the Charleston County Public Library system</li>
<li id="QB7ARN">Sharonda Coleman-Singleton: a church pastor, speech therapist, and coach of the girls' track and field team at Goose Creek High School</li>
<li id="Ve7pe9">Tywanza Sanders, 26: who had a degree in business administration from Allen University</li>
<li id="8hj4v2">Ethel Lance, 70: a retired Gilliard Center employee who previously worked as the church janitor</li>
<li id="MGoeQx">Susie Jackson, 87: Lance's cousin and a longtime church member</li>
<li id="pU5t5x">DePayne Middleton Doctor, 49: who retired in 2005 as Charleston County director of the Community Development Block Grant Program</li>
<li id="5DiWgs">Mira Thompson, 59: a pastor at the church</li>
<li id="h9XAAY">Daniel Simmons Sr., 74: who died in a hospital operating room</li>
</ul>
<p id="9CPcwb">Two women and a child survived the attack at the church basement, while two other people hid in an adjacent office and survived. <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/dylann-roof-death-penalty-trial-charleston-church-shooting/">According to investigators</a>, Roof yelled racist insults and told congregants that he intended to start a race war between black and white people, because, in his view, black people were raping white women and taking over the country. He reportedly spared the two women and child in the church basement so they would be able to report what he said to the rest of the world.</p>
<p id="b3zxPo">Roof, however, appeared to be unsure of how many people he shot. Asked by federal investigators how many he killed, he said, “Five, not really sure. Maybe four?”</p>
<p id="PxxT2t">Roof fled after the shooting, but he was <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/charleston-shooting-suspect-dylann-storm-roof-caught-north-carolina/">caught</a> in North Carolina when someone called the police after recognizing Roof from media coverage. His federal trial is now underway.</p>
<h3 id="X77SpP">Roof’s attack was motivated by racism, like many previous attacks on black churches</h3>
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<img alt="Dylann Storm Roof flags" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/sUxCGP_VRfAOjbWqI7xt_Cd0uG0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3804544/11265297_111398835859264_82145487461570196_o.0.jpg">
<cite><p>Facebook</p></cite>
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<p id="R68pTo">Roof’s motives, as survivors can attest to, were racist. Not only were his comments as he carried out the shooting racist, but shortly after the massacre an online manifesto surfaced in which Roof wrote in detail about his racist views. A Facebook picture also showed Roof wearing a jacket depicting the <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/6/18/8806633/charleston-shooter-flags-dylann-roof/in/8568286">flags of racist regimes in Africa</a>, including apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia. And Roof's roommate, Dalton Tyler, <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/charleston-shooting-closer-alleged-gunman-dylann-roof/story?id=31865375#.VYMh8uIP5Hk.twitter">told ABC News</a>, “He was big into segregation and other stuff. He said he wanted to start a civil war. He said he was going to do something like that and then kill himself.”</p>
<p id="fuMEkt">Roof also said in <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/dylann-roof-s-videotaped-confessions-stuns-courtroom-n694036">a videotaped confession</a>, “What I did is still minuscule to what they're doing to white people every day.” He added, “I do consider myself a white supremacist.”</p>
<p id="62Et9Z">Roof’s attack, however, is far from the first time that a black church was the target of a racist assault. These attacks have happened again and again throughout American history, typically motivated by black churches’ work in combating systemic racism.</p>
<p id="r9nGkR">The most infamous of these attacks is the church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama.</p>
<p id="Y2AfRV">Civil rights groups during the early 1960s actively targeted Birmingham for protests, knowing that the city — and the state of Alabama as a whole — was a hub for white supremacy groups and supporters of segregation. The backlash was fierce: Ku Klux Klan members routinely called in bomb threats — and others detonated homemade bombs — to disrupt civil rights meetings and church services. The anger eventually led to one of the most well-known terrorist attacks of the civil rights movement.</p>
<p id="ZjfYDa">On September 1963, a bomb detonated at the predominantly black 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/birmingham-church-bombing">About 200 people</a> were in the building, many attending Sunday school. Four black girls died, and at least 20 others were injured. </p>
<p id="pvqpn1">The attack quickly gained national attention as a symbol of anti-black oppression. But it would be <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/6/17/8802547/mass-shooting-emmanuel-charleston-sc">decades</a> until some of the perpetrators were tried and convicted, and one suspect even died before he could go to trial. The severe lag in justice led some of the survivors and relatives of the victims to <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/survivor-63-ala-church-bombing-seeks-funds-192504908.html">reject</a> Congress’s 2013 commemoration of the victims — arguing that it was too little, too late.</p>
<p id="HYocmy">Before Roof, the Emanuel AME Church was also attacked, with the church actually burned down at one point. </p>
<p id="zHdzYO">As <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/06/18/for-charlestons-emanuel-a-m-e-church-one-of-the-oldest-in-america-shooting-is-another-painful-chapter-in-long-history/?postshare=7381434622703943">Sarah Kaplin explained for the Washington Post</a>, <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/denmark-vesey-9517932">Denmark Vesey</a>, a founding member of the church, attempted to lead one of the nation’s most famous failed slave uprisings, which would have involved more than 9,000 black slaves. But the revolt was foiled when several slaves turned Vesey in, leading to his capture, a trial, and hanging.</p>
<p id="DVvEgK">White leaders blamed the attack on the Emanuel AME Church, saying it helped foster the attacks. They instituted harsh laws against black churches, including a ban on all-black services. The congregation was then dispersed, and the church was burned. (The congregation would continue to meet in secret.)</p>
<p id="AGEd7Z">The Emanuel AME Church’s experience represented the history of black churches in general: It was used to evade the systemic racism of the era, and it was attacked by white leaders who wanted to keep their racist policies in place. “That is a microcosm of how and why churches have become targeted,” Gerald Horne, a civil rights historian at the University of Houston, previously told me.</p>
<p id="UNIDGZ">But just as the church survived before, it has survived the Roof’s attack: The Emanuel AME Church, instead of closing its doors, has <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/17/us/charleston-mass-shooting-anniversary/">continued</a> holding events and recruiting more congregants. “Let all that you do be done in love,” the church, quoting scripture, wrote in <a href="http://www.emanuelamechurch.org/acts-of-grace/index.html">a message</a> one year after the shooting.</p>
<h3 id="QzjAF7">Racist attacks like Roof’s fit America’s original definition of terrorism</h3>
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<p id="hAMTIl">Following the shooting, there was a debate on social media about whether the attack should be considered an act of terrorism.</p>
<p id="gZXMEx">In the US and the West, terrorism is typically associated with radical Muslim extremists.</p>
<p id="YVBQii">But the original national definition of terrorism encompassed racist attacks on black people. The first federal anti-terrorism act passed in the US, <a href="http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ku-klux-act-passed-by-congress">the Ku Klux Act</a>, came in 1871 as a response to terrorism by the KKK, a white supremacist group. </p>
<p id="6hbDCZ">Back then, anti-black violence was fairly widespread: The Freedmen’s Bureau <a href="http://www.freedmensbureau.com/outrages.htm">recorded</a> hundreds of racist murders and attacks on black men throughout the South in the late 1860s.</p>
<p id="4nmfBo">The goal of these attacks was terror: to terrorize black people who dared to live in places once comfortably controlled by white Americans, and to terrorize black voters from voting for Republicans who supported civil rights legislation and actions at the time.</p>
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<img alt="A chart of racist attacks on South Carolina freedmen." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/HvK6WRb5Un5qy6_ViwjRP-mLD5s=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7603967/racist_attacks.png">
<cite>Christophe Haubursin/Vox</cite>
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<p id="48no54">So the federal government, led by President Ulysses Grant, stepped in to protect legal order and the integrity of the political system in the South. And one of the measures they took was the Ku Klux Act, which made it illegal under federal law to conspire to threaten elected officials and voters to deprive them of equal protection. The law and its aggressive enforcement by the Grant administration is widely credited with helping take down the KKK’s first iteration as a national terrorist group.</p>
<p id="cHu2G6">Still, the KKK and white supremacy would continue to resurface through US history. <a href="http://eji.org/reports/lynching-in-america">A 2015 report</a> by the Equal Justice Initiative found that lynchings in the South killed at least 4,000 black Americans between 1877 and 1950 — and that count is very likely a huge underestimate, given that there’s no documentation for many of these killings. And Southern governments imposed white supremacy through Jim Crow laws, which restricted black voting rights and enforced racial segregation, until the 1960s.</p>
<p id="YQbzDm">Thankfully, America has made some progress in reducing the worst of these abuses — although many issues remain, particularly in <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2015/03/26/the-racial-wealth-gap-why-a-typical-white-household-has-16-times-the-wealth-of-a-black-one/#1476a9ed6c5b">economic</a> <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-median-income-in-the-us-by-race-2013-9">disparities</a> and within <a href="http://www.vox.com/cards/police-brutality-shootings-us/us-police-racism">policing</a> and <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/5/29/8687205/criminal-justice-racism">the criminal justice system more broadly</a>. </p>
<p id="BYHcel">This progress, though, is one of the many reasons that Roof’s attack was so horrifying: Things like that just aren’t supposed to happen anymore.</p>
<h3 id="lXCSWX">America’s levels of gun violence are unique in the developed world</h3>
<p id="Hw2yL5">Beyond the racist aspects of Roof’s attack and the long history of racism in America it raises, the attack also brings up another tragically unique American story: the prevalence of gun violence in the US.</p>
<p id="hk9As7">No other developed country in the world has anywhere near the same rate of gun violence as America. The US has nearly six times the gun homicide rate of Canada, more than seven times Sweden’s, and nearly 16 times Germany’s, according to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homicides-ownership-world-list">UN data</a> compiled by the Guardian. (These gun deaths are a big reason America has a <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/4/7/8364263/us-europe-mass-incarceration">much higher overall homicide rate</a>, which includes non-gun deaths, than other developed nations.)</p>
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<img alt="America has far more gun homicides than other developed countries." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/JhCH-c921B8zdhRSnQaWY-vlEqU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4119056/gun%20homicides%20developed%20countries.jpg">
<cite><p>Javier Zarracina/Vox</p></cite>
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<p id="x8sHZK">What’s more, there appears to be a correlation between America’s high levels of gun violence and gun ownership, as this chart from <a href="http://tewksburylab.org/blog/2012/12/gun-violence-and-gun-ownership-lets-look-at-the-data/">Tewksbury Lab</a> shows:</p>
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<img alt="America has more guns — and more gun deaths." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/M0yDtOf9W32eRBRjIyB0AMVubeQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4002396/gun%20ownership%20countries.jpg">
<cite><p><a href="http://tewksburylab.org/blog/2012/12/gun-violence-and-gun-ownership-lets-look-at-the-data/">Tewksbury Lab</a></p></cite>
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<p id="tzfmRl">Research reviews by the <a href="http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/">Harvard School of Public Health’s Injury Control Research Center</a> have concluded that more gun ownership leads to more gun violence. Other factors, such as socioeconomic issues, contribute to violence, but guns are the one issue that makes America unique relative to other developed countries in comparable socioeconomic circumstances.</p>
<p id="U1Dwcx">Studies have found this at both the state and country level. Take, for instance, this chart, from a 2007 <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17070975">study</a> by Harvard researchers, showing the correlation between statewide firearm homicide victimization rates and household gun ownership after controlling for robbery rates:</p>
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<img alt="A chart that shows the close correlation between levels of gun ownership and gun homicide rates." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/TOjfRm_MtRRNJmWeHd1QU7pomtM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7602133/gun_homicides.png">
<cite><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17070975">Social Science and Medicine</a></cite>
</figure>
<p id="tnAfoR">A more recent <a href="http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2013.301409">study</a> from 2013, led by a Boston University School of Public Health researcher, reached similar conclusions: After controlling for multiple variables, the study found that a 1 percentage point increase in gun ownership correlated with a roughly 0.9 percent rise in the firearm homicide rate.</p>
<p id="Wv6nkt">This holds up around the world. As <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9217163/america-guns-europe">Zack Beauchamp explained for Vox</a>, a breakthrough analysis in the 1990s by UC Berkeley’s Franklin Zimring and Gordon Hawkins found that the US does not, contrary to the old conventional wisdom, have more crime in general than other Western industrial nations. Instead, the US appears to have more <em>lethal</em> violence — and that’s driven in large part by the prevalence of guns.</p>
<p id="ZGgWcU">“A series of specific comparisons of the death rates from property crime and assault in New York City and London show how enormous differences in death risk can be explained even while general patterns are similar,” Zimring and Hawkins wrote. “A preference for crimes of personal force and the willingness and ability to use guns in robbery make similar levels of property crime 54 times as deadly in New York City as in London.”</p>
<p id="tvrKpO">Guns are not the only factor that contributes to violence. (Other factors include, for example, concentrations of poverty, urbanization, and alcohol consumption.) But when researchers control for other confounding variables, they have found time and time again that America’s high levels of gun ownership and easy access to guns are major reasons the US is so much worse in terms of gun violence than its developed peers.</p>
<p id="N4f5Eo">In Roof’s case, the question is whether preventing him from obtaining a handgun could have stopped him from carrying out the church shooting. While it’s impossible to know for sure what would have happened under such a scenario, the research suggests that gun violence in general can be prevented with more restrictions on firearms. And based on the reporting following the shooting, existing laws, if they were enforced in a more comprehensive way, could have prevented Roof in particular from getting a gun.</p>
<h3 id="pkoLX3">The research shows gun control policies can help prevent violence</h3>
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<p id="Rj39ox">The <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/10/5/9454161/gun-violence-solution">research</a> shows tightening existing gun control measures in the US would help address the toll of gun violence: Studies in both <a href="http://www.taleoftwostates.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Connecticut-Study-Rudolph_AJPH201411682_Final.pdf">Connecticut</a> and <a href="http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/johns-hopkins-center-for-gun-policy-and-research/_pdfs/effects-of-missouris-repeal-of-its-handgun-purchaser-licensing-law-on-homicides.pdf">Missouri</a> suggested that gun licensing laws in those states helped reduce homicides and suicides.</p>
<p id="WWvqWg">But as <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/10/5/9454161/gun-violence-solution">Harvard’s David Hemenway told Dylan Matthews for Vox</a>, it would likely take decades for the mild gun control measures proposed in the US to have a significant impact. “It’s all speculation,” Hemenway said. “I suspect it would take a while (decades) for the US to get down to gun violence levels of other developed countries because a) we have so many guns which are durable, and b) we have a gun culture — we tend to use guns more often in more situations than citizens of other developed countries.”</p>
<p id="7IObSb">To have a more immediate impact, then, the US would have to find a way to quickly remove the number of guns in circulation. Other countries have actually done that: In Australia, after a 1996 <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/port-arthur-massacre-shooting-spree-changed-australia-gun-laws-n396476">mass shooting</a>, lawmakers passed new restrictions on guns and imposed a mandatory buyback program that essentially confiscated people’s guns, seizing at least 650,000 firearms.</p>
<p id="DxBSZq">According to <a href="https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/1264/2012/10/bulletins_australia_spring_2011.pdf">one review of the evidence</a> by Harvard researchers, Australia’s firearm homicide rate dropped by about 42 percent in the seven years after the law passed, and its firearm suicide rate fell by 57 percent.</p>
<p id="rE2Ptp">Although it’s hard to gauge how much of this was driven by the buyback program, researchers argue it likely played some role: “First, the drop in firearm deaths was largest among the type of firearms most affected by the buyback. Second, firearm deaths in states with higher buyback rates per capita fell proportionately more than in states with lower buyback rates.”</p>
<p id="KmomMp">Still, similar policies would be difficult to pass in America, a nation in which gun culture and ownership are tremendously ingrained — notably in the Second Amendment. And gun owners are backed by a powerful lobby: the National Rifle Association. Combined, these forces have stopped any serious gun legislation from passing at the federal level — although <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/10/3/9444417/gun-violence-united-states-america">some states</a> have passed new restrictions in the past few years.</p>
<p id="ruREBV">But there’s evidence that at least some mild reforms could have helped prevent the Charleston shooting: As <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/03/us/how-mass-shooters-got-their-guns.html">the New York Times reported</a>, Roof was supposed to be barred from buying a gun because he previously admitted to illegally possessing drugs. But the FBI examiner who conducted the background check <a href="https://www.factcheck.org/2016/02/clintons-charleston-loophole-claim/">failed to obtain the correct police records</a>, so he never saw the admission.</p>
<p id="crV5DT">This is a notorious problem in <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2015/12/4/9850572/gun-control-us-japan-switzerland-uk-canada">America’s enforcement of its gun laws</a>: Very frequently, local and state police don’t cooperate closely with the feds, and the FBI is perpetually too understaffed and underresourced to follow up as much as it should. So things fall through.</p>
<p id="UPuRhT">America could work to change this by beefing up its enforcement of existing gun laws or passing new gun laws and strictly enforcing those. But it hasn’t. And the result is far more tragedies — including, perhaps, the Charleston church shooting.</p>
https://www.vox.com/identities/2016/12/7/13868662/dylann-roof-trial-verdict-charleston-church-shootingGerman Lopez2016-06-16T17:30:03-04:002016-06-16T17:30:03-04:00The largest Protestant denomination just voted to stop displaying the Confederate flag
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<img alt="A supporter stands at a Confederate flag rally at the South Carolina Statehouse after the Charleston shooting." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/1QVf-fuaFiOQl_v1w8TFb66dNso=/0x0:3000x2250/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/49878481/GettyImages-478761614.0.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>A supporter stands at a Confederate flag rally at the South Carolina Statehouse after the Charleston shooting. | <a href='http://www.gettyimages.com/license/478761614''>Win McNamee via Getty Images</a></figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="uG3eNe">The latest push against the Confederate flag is coming from the pulpit.</p>
<p id="Y9CpBy">On Tuesday, the US Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant Christian denomination in the country,<b> </b>voted that members stop displaying the Confederate flag.</p>
<p id="zlKtrd">Black Texas pastor Dwight McKissic proposed the <a href="https://dwightmckissic.wordpress.com/2016/04/18/resolution-on-the-elimination-of-the-confederate-flag-from-public-life/">Confederate flag resolution</a> to the SBC in April, to honor the nine black parishioners who were shot and killed at the <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/6/18/8803623/charleston-shooting-church-history/in/8568286">historic Mother Emanuel AME Church</a><b> </b>in Charleston, South Carolina; it was passed on the eve of the tragedy’s one-year anniversary.</p>
<p id="YOhmuJ">The SBC was <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/southern-baptists-wrestle-with-the-sin-of-racism/389808/">created</a> in 1845 after a group of churches, unwilling to remain neutral on the moral standing of slavery, created their own association that allowed them to both praise God and support the institution.<b> </b></p>
<p id="b27SC8">"The SBC supported the Confederacy and was emotionally and philosophically attached to the Confederacy," McKissic <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/06/14/at-a-historic-meeting-southern-baptists-may-consider-opposing-confederate-flag/?tid=a_inl">wrote</a>. "The Dylann Roof love affair with the Confederate [flag] and his murdering of nine innocent Black Kingdom-citizens (Christians) has brought this matter back to the forefront."</p>
<p id="v3j0NP">According to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/06/15/southern-baptist-convention-votes-to-condemn-confederate-battle-flag/">the Washington Post</a>, the SBC leadership was skeptical about how the proposal would be received, but when they brought the resolution the floor, members demonstrated their commitment to the proposal’s ideals. Voters proposed their own changes to the original proposal, eliminating references to family history — one of the reasons used to justify the flag is as a symbol of Southern pride — and called for outright removal rather than limited displays.</p>
<p id="WkXKNX">"We call our brothers and sisters in Christ to discontinue the display of the Confederate flag as a sign of solidarity of the whole Body of Christ, including our African-American brothers and sisters," <a href="http://erlc.com/resource-library/articles/resolution-7-on-sensitivity-and-unity-regarding-the-confederate-battle-flag">said</a> the final draft of the resolution.</p>
<h3 id="20zutH">The SBC shows Southern heritage needs to recognize black people, too</h3>
<p id="TiTjnh">The SBC joins other Christian institutions that are reconsidering the ties between the flag and the pulpit. Last week, the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/06/09/481360313/national-cathedral-will-remove-confederate-flag-stained-glass-windows">announced</a> that it will remove images of the flag on its stained glass windows.</p>
<p id="GNqdWF">But the vote also demonstrates that evaluating the Confederate flag as either a symbol of Southern roots <i>or</i> an emblem of racism born from the South’s historical ties to slavery is a false dichotomy rooted in erasing the flag's tie to racism.</p>
<p id="5SKRKF">The flag is inextricably tied <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/6/20/8818093/confederate-flag-south-carolina-charleston-shooting/in/8568286">to white supremacy</a>. Confederates fought for states’ rights during the Civil War because they wanted the federal government to respect a state’s wish to own slaves. This continued when the rebel flag gained prominence in the 1950s explicitly as a symbol for Southern whites as African Americans gained civil rights advances.</p>
<p id="ILuy1q">"[The flag] means the Southern cause," <a href="http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/roy-v-harris-1895-1985">Roy Harris</a>, a noted segregationist in Georgia politics, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Confederate-Battle-Flag-Americas-Embattled/dp/0674019830?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0">said</a> in 1951. "It is becoming ... the symbol of the white race and the cause of the white people."</p>
<p id="sZxCkj">Over time, this story has been retold as a matter of Southern pride and heritage. But the Charleston shooting showed that was neither innocuous, nor would it suffice, because racism, even in the 21st century, persists.</p>
<p id="YEju0T">When <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/us/dylann-storm-roof-photos-website-charleston-church-shooting.html" target="_blank">investigators looked into Roof’s background</a>, they found he had written an online racist manifesto and was seen in pictures posing with the Confederate flag. Another picture <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/6/18/8806633/charleston-shooter-flags-dylann-roof">surfaced</a> of Roof wearing a jacket with other racist flags — an homage to apartheid South Africa and the former racist colonial state of Rhodesia that is now contemporary Zimbabwe.</p>
<p id="AYYvvW">In the wake of the attack at Mother Emanuel, activist Bree Newsome scaled a flagpole at the South Carolina Statehouse to take down the Confederate flag in protest to the whitewashing of the flag's legacy after the shooting.</p>
<p id="gph5g1">"You see, I know my history and my heritage," Newsome <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/06/29/why-bree-newsome-took-down-the-confederate-flag-in-s-c-i-refuse-to-be-ruled-by-fear/?utm_term=.884d7750d754">said</a> last year. "The Confederacy is neither the only legacy of the south nor an admirable one. The southern heritage I embrace is the legacy of a people unbowed by racial oppression."</p>
<p><b>Watch Bree Newsome take down the Confederate flag</b></p>
<div class="volume-video" id="volume-placement-3351" data-volume-placement="article" data-analytics-placement="article:middle" data-volume-id="3256" data-volume-uuid="ce5a8fcbc" data-analytics-label="Bree Newsome takes down SC Confederate Flag | 3256" data-analytics-action="volume:view:article:middle" data-analytics-viewport="video"></div>
<p id="mCEZV7">After Newsome's action sparked massive discussion, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/us/south-carolina-nikki-haley-confederate-flag.html?_r=0">s</a><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/us/south-carolina-nikki-haley-confederate-flag.html?_r=0">tates</a> also condemned the flag, removing it from public buildings and license plates in a gesture toward transparency about the painful history woven into the rebel flag. The SBC vote is an attempt to do the same.</p>
<p id="FPKBcK">But the Charleston shooting and the diversity of the SBC’s membership no longer allows the organization to absolve itself of taking responsibility for its own history.</p>
<p id="4bLFU0">The network of churches <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/southern-baptists-confederate-flag_us_57610aa5e4b0df4d586e9983?ir=Black+Voices&section=us_black-voices&utm_hp_ref=black-voices">apologized</a> for its position on slavery in 1995. In 2011, the SBC elected Fred Luter, a senior minister from Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans, as its first black SBC president, and he served from 2012 to 2014.<b> </b>Today, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/06/14/at-a-historic-meeting-southern-baptists-may-consider-opposing-confederate-flag/?tid=a_inl">20 percent</a> of SBC member churches do not have predominantly white congregations.</p>
<p id="1564aE">"As I’ve said before, the Cross and the Confederate flag cannot co-exist without one setting the other on fire," Russell Moore, the leader of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, <a href="http://www.russellmoore.com/2016/06/14/southern-baptists-confederate-flag/">wrote</a> in a blog post. "Today, messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention, including many white Anglo southerners, decided the cross was more important than the flag. They decided our African-American brothers and sisters are more important than family heritage."</p>
https://www.vox.com/2016/6/16/11954516/southern-baptist-convention-confederate-flag-charleston-shootingVictoria M. Massie2015-07-31T13:45:00-04:002015-07-31T13:45:00-04:00Charleston shooting suspect pleads not guilty to federal charges
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/anXu42q2zN_bTgGfsCh-pA3qssc=/0x143:4788x3734/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/46568270/AP827686821122.0.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>David Goldman/Associated Press</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The man suspected of carrying out a mass shooting at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, pleaded not guilty to 33 federal charges, including hate crimes, firearms violations, and obstructing the practice of religion.</p>
<p>The suspect, 21-year-old Dylann Roof, was already indicted on nine murder charges, three attempted murder charges, and one weapons offense at the state level, according to <a target="_blank" href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/07/07/dylann-roof-indicted-in-charleston-shootings/29815457/">USA Today's John Bacon</a>.</p>
<p>Roof wants to plead guilty to the federal charges, but his lawyers are pleading not guilty until they find out whether federal prosecutors will seek the <a href="http://www.vox.com/cards/death-penalty-capital-punishment" target="_blank">death penalty</a>, <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/charleston-church-shooting/dylan-roof-wants-plead-guilty-church-massacre-lawyer-says-n401751" target="_blank">NBC News's James Novogrod and Terry Pickard</a> reported.</p>
<p><span>On June 17, Roof</span><span> allegedly walked into the</span><span> Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church</span><span> and, after sitting for some time with the congregants, purportedly shot and killed nine people — in what some officials have described as a hate crime. Three others escaped.</span></p>
<p><span>Roof has a racially charged history. Police </span>said Roof made racially inflammatory statements before leaving the church's Bible study room, according to the <a href="https://twitter.com/rayajalabi/status/611982640900612096" target="_blank">Guardian's Raya Jalabi</a>. A <a target="_blank" href="http://lastrhodesian.com/data/documents/rtf88.txt">manifesto</a> that <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2015/6/20/8818389/dylann-roof-manifesto">appears</a> to be written by Roof is laced with racism. <span>A Facebook picture shows Roof wearing a jacket depicting the </span><a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2015/6/18/8806633/charleston-shooter-flags-dylann-roof/in/8568286">flags of racist regimes in Africa</a><span>, including apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia. And </span><span>Roof's roommate, Dalton Tyler, told </span><a target="_blank" href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/charleston-shooting-closer-alleged-gunman-dylann-roof/story?id=31865375#.VYMh8uIP5Hk.twitter">ABC News's Emily Shapiro</a><span>, "He was big into segregation and other stuff. He said he wanted to start a civil war. He said he was going to do something like that and then kill himself."</span></p>
<p><span>Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen described the shooting as a "hate crime," saying it was "the worst night of my career … clearly a tragedy in the city of Charleston."</span></p>
<h3>A white gunman shot and killed nine people at a black church</h3>
<p><span>Eight people were killed inside the church, and a ninth victim died in the hospital.</span></p>
<p><span>Police said the suspect was at the church for nearly an hour before the shooting.</span></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Charleston?src=hash">#Charleston</a> PD Chief: shooter attended meeting at Emanuel AME, was there nearly an hour before <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CharlestonShooting?src=hash">#CharlestonShooting</a>. <a href="https://twitter.com/nprnews">@nprnews</a></p>
— Sarah McCammon (@sarahmccammon) <a href="https://twitter.com/sarahmccammon/status/611492234987442177">June 18, 2015</a>
</blockquote>
<p>The local coroner identified all the victims. Here's the list from the <a href="http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20150618/PC16/150619404" target="_blank">Post and Courier's Andrew Knapp</a>:</p>
<ul>
<li><span>Clementa Pinckney, 41: state senator, church pastor, and rising star in the South Carolina Democratic Party</span></li>
<li><span>Cynthia Hurd, 54: St. Andrews regional branch manager for the Charleston County Public Library system</span></li>
<li><span>Sharonda Coleman-Singleton: a church pastor, speech therapist, and coach of the girls' track and field team at Goose Creek High School</span></li>
<li><span>Tywanza Sanders, 26: who had a degree in business administration from Allen University</span></li>
<li><span>Ethel Lance, 70: a retired Gilliard Center employee who previously worked as the church janitor</span></li>
<li><span>Susie Jackson, 87: Lance's cousin and a longtime church member</span></li>
<li><span>DePayne Middleton Doctor, 49: who retired in 2005 as Charleston County director of the Community Development Block Grant Program</span></li>
<li><span>Mira Thompson, 59: a pastor at the church</span></li>
<li><span>Daniel Simmons Sr., 74: who died in a hospital operating room</span></li>
</ul>
<p>Roof's family released a statement saying they were "devastated and saddened by what occurred," <a href="https://twitter.com/ABC/status/612019736289763333" target="_blank">ABC News</a> reported.</p>
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<script charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
</p>
<blockquote lang="en" class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">NEW: Family of alleged gunman in Charleston church massacre: "We are devastated and saddened by what occurred." <a href="http://t.co/LXN7GdluxS">pic.twitter.com/LXN7GdluxS</a></p>
— ABC News (@ABC) <a href="https://twitter.com/ABC/status/612019736289763333">June 19, 2015</a>
</blockquote>
<p>Roof's trial has already run into some problems: The South Carolina Supreme Court ordered a new judge to preside in the case as revelations surfaced that the previous judge had made racist remarks in the courtroom more than a decade ago, <a target="new" href="http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/charleston-church-shooting/state-supreme-court-orders-new-judge-charleston-shooter-case-n379066">NBC News's Elizabeth Chuck and Erika Angulo</a> reported.</p>
<h3>The shooting occurred at a historically significant black church</h3>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/i77fjdU5DxhXO1AWtkJY0y8wIW8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3802390/1315479248_70f67f818f_b.0.jpg">
<cite><p><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/willia4/1315479248/">James Williams</a></p></cite>
<figcaption>
<p>A distant view of the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.</p>
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</figure>
<p>Emanuel <a target="_blank" href="http://www.emanuelamechurch.org/">describes itself</a> as "the oldest AME church in the South." AME stands for African Methodist Episcopal Church, a predominantly African-American denomination of Christianity.</p>
<p>As the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/06/18/for-charlestons-emanuel-a-m-e-church-one-of-the-oldest-in-america-shooting-is-another-painful-chapter-in-long-history/?postshare=7381434622703943">Washington Post's Sarah Kaplan</a><span> explained, Charleston's Emanuel AME Church was started in 1816 by Morris Brown, a founding pastor of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, who was fed up with the racism he encountered in other churches in the area.</span></p>
<p>The church hosted some of the prominent black activists of the time. <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/denmark-vesey-9517932">Denmark Vesey</a>, a founding member of the church, at one point attempted to lead one of the nation's most famous failed slave uprisings, which would have involved more than 9,000 black slaves. But the revolt was foiled when several slaves turned Vesey in, leading to his capture, a trial, and hanging.</p>
<p>White leaders blamed the attack on the Emanuel AME Church, saying it helped foster the attacks. They instituted harsh laws against black churches, including a ban on all-black services. The congregation was then dispersed, and the church was burned. (The congregation would continue to meet in secret.)</p>
<p>In many ways, the Emanuel AME Church's experience represented the history of black churches in general: it was used to evade the systemic racism of the era, and it was attacked by white leaders who wanted to keep their racist policies in place. "That is a microcosm of how and why churches have become targeted," Gerald Horne, a civil rights historian at the University of Houston, said.</p>
<h3>Local officials called the shooting a hate crime</h3>
<p>The mayor and police chief described the mass shooting as a hate crime.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">"The only reason someone would walk into a church and shoot people that were praying is hate,' said Charleston Mayor Joe Riley.</p>
— Saeed Ahmed (@saeed_ahmed) <a href="https://twitter.com/saeed_ahmed/status/611397210056617984">June 18, 2015</a>
</blockquote>
<p>But South Carolina is one of six states — along with Arkansas, Indiana, Georgia, Utah, and Wyoming — that has no hate crime penalty law at the state level, according to the <a href="http://archive.adl.org/learn/hate_crimes_laws/sc.html">Anti-Defamation League</a>.</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/z-DiijwYsEk951WssRemmcmgzBc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3804838/hate%20crimes%20US.png">
</figure>
</p>
<p>Federal law, which does apply to South Carolina, penalizes hate crimes. But these cases require federal law enforcement to get involved and proceedings in federal courts, which deal with far fewer criminal cases than state courts. It typically takes high-profile cases to get the feds' attention to investigate an act as a hate crime, as the FBI has said it's doing in the Charleston shooting.</p>
<p>When a hate crime is prosecuted, it's typically layered on top of other charges, adding criminal penalties. So if someone commits a murder and it's deemed a hate crime, he faces criminal penalties for both the murder and the hate crime. The extra penalties are supposed to deter and punish people for acts against certain groups of people.</p>
<p>As <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/06/18/3671111/south-carolina-shooting-hate-crime/">ThinkProgress's Aviva Shen</a> reported, State Rep. Wendell Gilliard, who represents the district where the <a href="http://www.scstatehouse.gov/legislatorssearch.php" target="_blank">Charleston church</a> is located, has <a href="http://www.live5news.com/story/26440272/renewed-push-for-hate-crime-law-in-south-carolina">worked</a> to pass a hate crime law in South Carolina. But his efforts have been unsuccessful — leaving the state as one of the few without extra penalties for racially motivated attacks.</p>
<h3>The Charleston shooting follows a long history of attacks on black churches</h3>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/R_X5IZJXnwwIQBjD0FimjkypUTE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3803336/Birmingham%20church.jpg">
<cite><p>Universal Images Group via Getty Images</p></cite>
<figcaption>
<p>The 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, where a bomb killed four girls in 1963.</p>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Attacks on black churches were a common occurrence throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, including a <a href="http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/jmd/legacy/2014/06/03/hear-98-1996.pdf">wave of firebombings</a> of black churches in the South in the 1990s and a burning of a black church in Massachusetts the day President Barack Obama was inaugurated, as the <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/thugs-and-terrorists-have-plagued-black-churches-for-generations/396212/?utm_source=SFFB">Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf</a> reported.</p>
<p>Civil rights groups during the early 1960s actively targeted Birmingham for protests, knowing that the city — and the state of Alabama as a whole — was a hub for white supremacy groups and supporters of segregation. The backlash was fierce: KKK members routinely called in bomb threats — and others detonated homemade bombs — to disrupt civil rights meetings and church services. The anger eventually led to one of the most well-known terrorist attacks of the civil rights movement.</p>
<div>
<p>On September 15, 1963, a bomb detonated at the predominantly black 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. About 200 people were in the building, according to <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/birmingham-church-bombing">History.com</a>, many attending Sunday school. Four black girls died, and at least 20 others were injured.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>News wire service <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/churches/archives1.htm">UPI</a> described the aftermath in 1963:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Parts of brightly painted children's furniture were strewn about in one Sunday School room, and blood stained the floors. Chunks of concrete the size of footballs littered the basement.</p>
<p>The bomb apparently went off in an unoccupied basement room and blew down the wall, sending stone and debris flying like shrapnel into a room where children were assembling for closing prayers following Sunday School. Bibles and song books lay shredded and scattered through the church.</p>
<p>In the main sanctuary upstairs, which holds about 500 persons, the pulpit and Bible were covered with pieces of stained glass.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was the fourth bombing in Birmingham in four weeks and the 21st in eight years, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/churches/archives1.htm">UPI</a> reported at the time. Up to that point, none of the bombings had been resolved in court.</p>
<p>The investigation into the Birmingham church bombing, the most high-profile of the cases, didn't lead to justice for decades. Robert Chambliss was <a href="http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2007/september/bapbomb_092609">convicted</a> to life in prison in 1977, Bobby Cherry and Thomas Blanton were indicted in 2000 and later convicted to life in prison, and a fourth suspect, Herman Cash, died in 1994 before he could face trial.</p>
<p>For some, the feeling of neglect remains. When Congress in 2013 <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/other/congressional-leaders-honor-victims-1963-birmingham-church-bombing-f8C11125636">commemorated</a> the victims of the Birmingham church bombing, some of the survivors and relatives told the <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/survivor-63-ala-church-bombing-seeks-funds-192504908.html">Associated Press's Jay Reeves</a> they weren't interested. Sarah Rudolph said she wanted compensation for the injuries she suffered, including a lost eye, and for the death of her sister, who was one of the girls killed.</p>
<p>"We haven't received anything, and I lost an eye," Rudolph told the AP. "It's a smoke screen to shut us up and make us go away so we'll never be heard from again."</p>
<h3>The shooting invoked calls to take down the Confederate flag in South Carolina's Capitol</h3>
<p> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/e43bZmjLIeMG_w3HykqkbC42Tcw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3810044/Confederate%20flag.jpg">
<cite><p>Chris Hondros/Getty Images</p></cite>
</figure>
</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/6/20/8818093/confederate-flag-south-carolina-charleston-shooting" target="_blank">Confederate flag</a> still <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/6/18/8803661/charleston-sc-shooting-confederate-flag-statehouse" target="_blank">flies</a> at South Carolina's statehouse, imposing what's historically been a symbol of racial hatred. This has led to swift protests across the country: On social media, many have taken up the hashtag <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TakeItDown?src=hash" target="_blank">#TakeItDown</a> to demand the flag be removed.</p>
<p>But the Confederate flag isn't the only remaining symbol of the South's racist past. As <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/6/19/8811821/things-named-after-confederate-leaders" target="_blank">Vox's Matt Yglesias</a> explained, there are dozens of monuments and statues commemorating racists and traitors who fought to keep slavery in the Civil War and pushed for racist Jim Crow laws, such as segregation, in the aftermath. "<span>Consider</span><span> </span><a href="http://fhs.marshall.k12tn.net/">Forrest High School</a><span> </span><span>in Marshall County, Tennessee, named after Confederate General and Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest," Yglesias wrote. "Forrest also lends his name to a state park in Tennessee and the ROTC building at Middle Tennessee State University."</span></p>
<p>All of these symbols are meant to show support for the South's heritage. But they ignore that much of that history is mired by racism — and, during events like the Charleston shooting, they appear to give some historical legitimacy to racist acts.</p>
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<h3>Gun violence is much more common in the US compared with its developed peers</h3>
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<p>In <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/6/18/8806379/charleston-shooting-obama">response</a> to the shooting, President Barack Obama highlighted a troubling fact: America has far more gun violence than its developed peers around the world.</p>
<p>"This type of mass violence doesn't happen in other advanced countries," Obama said. "It doesn't happen in other places with this kind of frequency. And it is within our power to do something about it. I say this recognizing that the politics of this town foreclose a lot of those avenues. But it would be wrong for us not to acknowledge it."</p>
<p>Obama is right: Gun violence is way more common in the US than in its developed peers — and it's not even close. This chart, compiled using United Nations data collected by the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homicides-ownership-world-list#data">Guardian's Simon Rogers</a>, shows that America far and away leads Canada, Japan, and several European counterparts in gun homicides:</p>
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<p>But <em>why</em> does the US have so many more gun homicides than other advanced countries? One possible explanation: Americans are much more likely to own guns than their peers around the world. And the <a href="http://www.vox.com/cards/gun-violence-facts/gun-homicide-effect-increase">empirical research</a> shows places with more guns have more homicides.</p>
<p>According to survey data compiled by Rogers, the US had 88.8 guns per 100 people in 2007 — compared with 54.8 in the second-closest country, Yemen. Reddit user <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/27lu66/average_firearms_per_100_people_fixed4500_2234/">Phillybdizzle</a> mapped Rogers's data, showing just how much the US stands out compared to the rest of the world:</p>
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<img alt="gun ownership map" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/NcxY4GKbircqtopVOVdFbfF7MDM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3733892/gun_ownership_per_100_people.0.jpg">
<cite><a class="ql-link" href="http://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/27lu66/average_firearms_per_100_people_fixed4500_2234/" target="_blank">Phillybdizzle/Reddit</a></cite>
</figure>
<p>Criminal justice experts <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/4/7/8364263/us-europe-mass-incarceration">widely recognize</a> this is a result of cultural and policy decisions that have made firearms far more available in America than in most of the world.</p>
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https://www.vox.com/2015/6/17/8802547/mass-shooting-emmanuel-charleston-scGerman LopezTimothy B. Lee2015-07-24T09:37:00-04:002015-07-24T09:37:00-04:0075 mass shootings since Sandy Hook, in one map
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<p>[<a href="http://www.vox.com/a/mass-shootings-sandy-hook">UPDATE: We're continuing to refresh this map here.</a>]</p>
<p>In December 2012, a gunman killed 20 children, six adults, and himself at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. The event caught the entire country's attention; we grappled with how violence on such a scale could come about and how to prevent such things from happening in the future. At least 235 people have died in other mass shootings since then, reminding us that these problems are far from over.</p>
<p>That figure is according to a mass shootings database by <a href="https://library.stanford.edu/projects/mass-shootings-america/data">Stanford Geospatial Center</a>, updated by Vox. The database goes back to 1966 and includes descriptions of many of the incidents. Below, we've extracted its 75 mass shootings after Sandy Hook, up to and including <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/7/24/9030337/gun-violence-mass-shootings">yesterday's shooting at a movie theater</a> in Lafayette, Louisiana:</p>
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<p>Note: The Stanford Geospatial Center's database is a continuing project, sourced from news reports and government documents. The center's definition of a mass shooting incident is one that "involves an active shooter who shot 3 or more people in a single event." Various definitions of mass shootings can lead to different analyses about trends over time, as Vox's Dylan Matthews explains <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2014/10/21/7027395/gun-violence-mass-shootings-james-alan-fox-mother-jones-cohen-azrael-suicide">here</a>.</p>
<div class="vox-cardstack"><a href="http://www.vox.com/cards/gun-violence-facts/mass-shootings-rare-united-states">Mass shootings aren't getting more common — and are a tiny share of all shootings</a></div>
<p>[<a href="http://www.vox.com/a/mass-shootings-sandy-hook">UPDATE: We're continuing to refresh this map here.</a>]</p>
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<h3>VIDEO: Seven years, Seven Obama speeches on mass shootings</h3>
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https://www.vox.com/2015/6/25/8836735/map-mass-shootings-sandy-hookVox Staff2015-07-22T13:58:00-04:002015-07-22T13:58:00-04:00Charleston shooter Dylann Roof's been charged with a federal hate crime
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<img alt="Accused Charleston shooter Dylann Roof is loaded onto a plane to return to South Carolina." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-op7stt06zacYECjDdkOyqGeNQM=/465x720:1222x1288/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/46573554/GettyImages-477633752.0.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Accused Charleston shooter Dylann Roof is loaded onto a plane to return to South Carolina. | Andy McMillan/Getty</figcaption>
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<p>On Wednesday, according to <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/mattapuzzo/status/623911804964577280">Matt Apuzzo</a> of the New York Times, federal prosecutors charged Dylann Roof, the alleged shooter in the June 17 massacre at Charleston's Emanuel AME Church, on 33 counts — including hate crime charges and a charge of destroying or defacing religious property.</p>
<p>Roof has already been <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/6/17/8802547/mass-shooting-emmanuel-charleston-sc" target="_blank">charged </a>by South Carolina prosecutors with nine counts of murder and one count of possession of a firearm during the commission of a violent crime. But federal officials believe "murder" doesn't really encompass what Roof is accused of doing — especially after the discovery of a white supremacist manifesto on a website that has been traced back to Roof. Here's what a federal hate crime prosecution means.</p>
<h3>Roof was already charged at the state level — but not with a hate crime</h3>
<p>South Carolina doesn't have a separate law that gives harsher sentences to hate crimes. But the federal government does: It's made willfully killing someone because of his or her race a crime that's punishable with life in federal prison. (The verbatim text of the law in question is <a target="_blank" href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/249">here</a>.)</p>
<p>In cases like this, where someone's alleged crime runs afoul of both state and federal law, federal and state prosecutors usually figure out which one of them is in the best position to bring a case to trial, for efficiency's sake. But in the meantime, according to Alex Little, a lawyer and former assistant US attorney, it's almost always easier for states to file charges quickly than it is for the federal government to "cobble together a complaint." That's why South Carolina prosecutors filed their charges the day after Roof was arrested, even though the federal government took a few weeks to decide how to proceed.</p>
<p>If the federal government files charges of its own, the state usually decides not to pursue its case. It's not yet clear that this will happen in Roof's case, but it's usually how things go.</p>
<p>But if prosecuting Roof in federal court instead of state court makes it possible to charge him with a hate crime, it also has something prosecutors might see as a drawback: It will be harder and more complicated to sentence him to death in federal court.</p>
<p>The murder charges Roof has been hit with in South Carolina are all eligible for the death penalty if he's convicted. But at the federal level, it's not so straightforward.</p>
<p>Roof actually couldn't be sentenced to death on hate crime charges alone. But one of the 33 crimes he's charged with is intentionally destroying religious property because of the race of those who worshiped there — and if death results from that act (as it did in Charleston), someone convicted of that crime can get the death sentence.</p>
<p>That puts a lot of pressure on prosecutors to make sure Roof is found guilty of that particular charge. And even then, the process of sentencing someone to death is a lot more straightforward at the state level — federal death penalty cases, as the trial of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev showed, can be awfully complicated. There's a whole process a federal prosecutor has to follow just to be allowed to ask the judge for a death sentence — culminating in the greenlight from the attorney general herself. (Massachusetts doesn't have the death penalty, so the only option prosecutors had for getting Tsarnaev sentenced to death was taking him to federal court.)</p>
<p>"South Carolina may feel they can get convictions and get justice more swiftly for the families of the victims," says Little.</p>
<p>It's entirely possible that federal prosecutors could decide to prosecute Roof in federal court for a hate crime and in state court for murder, as rare as that is. Or perhaps the federal government will feel it's worth the extra effort and risk to give him a federal death sentence. But from a prosecutor's perspective, it might not be as easy a choice as one might think.</p>
<h3>The federal government didn't need to step in here — but it wanted to send a message</h3>
<p>Traditionally, the federal government leaves it to states to prosecute murder cases. Since there's no question that what Roof is accused of doing would count as murder, the federal government doesn't need to step in to ensure a conviction.</p>
<p>When states <em>aren't </em>willing to prosecute, or when they can't successfully bring someone to justice, that's another story. "Often the federal government will act as a backstop to state prosecutions if they feel the state may have gotten it wrong," says Little. And when it comes to attacks on African Americans, they've often felt the states <em>have </em>gotten it wrong, as with cases in the mid-20th century when local prosecutors weren't willing to charge white people for attacks on black people, and the 1993 federal trial of the police officers who beat Rodney King — after they were acquitted by a Los Angeles jury with no black members.</p>
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<img alt="emmett till funeral" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/DFEgFx8jGIKjgULCeahe9cxns1Y=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3807636/GettyImages-109429921.0.jpg">
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<p class="caption">When Emmett Till was murdered, an all-white jury acquitted the men accused of killing him. That's what the state not doing its job looks like. (Abbott Sengstacke Family Papers/Robert Abbott Sengstacke/Getty Images)</p>
<p>Regardless of whether South Carolina has come to terms with its racist history, the state government seems pretty eager to convict Roof. Gov. Nikki Haley <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/dylann-roof-deserves-death-pentalty-nikki-haley-119200.html" target="_blank">has said</a> that "we will absolutely want him to get the death penalty." So the federal government didn't <i>need </i>to step in to ensure a prosecution.</p>
<p>But sometimes the feds step in not because they're worried about a state trial, but because they simply feel it's important to send a message by convicting someone of a federal crime. That's what happened with the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2015/5/15/8612921/dzhokhar-tsarnaev-verdict-boston-bombing">Tsarnaev</a> trial.</p>
<p>"There are Justice Department officials who may say, 'You know what, South Carolina, this is not just a murder, this is a hate crime," says Little. "You as a state have chosen not to prohibit hate crimes in a special category; we as the federal government believe that's the message we need to send with this prosecution."</p>
<p>And that's exactly what appears to have happened here. "This directly fits the hate crime statute. This is exactly what it was created for," one official told the New York Times in June.</p>
<p>Furthermore, protecting minority rights in the South isn't new territory for the federal government. "The federal government has traditionally taken the role, since particularly the civil rights era, of enforcing statutes to protect individuals who may be targeted because of their race in the South," Little points out. That's often been because they don't trust the states to do it. But it's a tradition they may want to make a point of continuing.</p>
<hr>
<p><b>Clarification:</b> The text of the federal hate crime law is syntactically complicated, so we paraphrased it to make it straightforward and added a link to the verbatim text. Thanks to @Popehat for pointing out the erroneous quotation marks. We've also clarified how federal prosecutors could charge Roof with a capital crime.</p>
https://www.vox.com/2015/6/19/8813817/charleston-shooter-hate-crimeDara Lind2015-06-30T23:25:00-04:002015-06-30T23:25:00-04:00The latest fires at Southern black churches invoke memories of a long, terrible history
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<img alt="Martin Luther King Jr. attends a funeral for the victims of the Birmingham church bombing in 1963." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/trEMcTgF8SBToBSxBQp13ci9E0M=/0x78:6262x4775/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/46565646/GettyImages-537165365.0.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Martin Luther King Jr. attends a funeral for the victims of the Birmingham church bombing in 1963. | <a href='http://www.gettyimages.com'>Declan Haun/Chicago History Museum via Getty Images</a></figcaption>
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<p>Recent church fires in the aftermath of the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2015/6/17/8802547/mass-shooting-emmanuel-charleston-sc">mass shooting</a> at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, have invoked painful memories of the long, terrible history of attacks on African-American religious institutions.</p>
<p>Officials haven't released evidence that suggests the recent church fires were hate crimes, and most aren't being investigated as arson, according to the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-black-churches-naacp-20150630-story.html" target="_blank">Los Angeles Time's Matt Pearce</a>. <span>The handful of reported church fires also aren't out of the norm — there were an average of 31 church fires a week in the US between 2007 and 2011, according to </span><a href="http://www.nfpa.org/~/media/files/research/nfpa-reports/occupancies/osreligious.pdf?la=en" target="_blank">National Fire Protection Association data</a> uncovered by Pearce.</p>
<p><span>But while these fires may not be linked to hate crimes, there is a long history of white supremacist attacks on black churches — and these attacks often had the explicit goal of terrorizing black communities to impose racist laws and policies on African Americans.</span></p>
<h3>Black churches were sanctuaries for black Americans — and threats to white power</h3>
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<img alt="Charleston South Carolina church" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/m3ORw0JqQeLqs6MttFo0a-Zota8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3803182/AP827686821122.0.jpg">
<cite><p>David Goldman/Associated Press</p></cite>
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<p>The Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.</p>
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<p>Historically, black churches are not just houses of worship — they have also acted as sanctuaries from racism and organizational hubs for civil rights rallies. Many of the civil rights leaders of the past few decades have even come from churches, including Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.</p>
<p>White supremacists throughout American history often saw these churches as threats, making them prime targets for those who wanted to terrorize and maintain control of black communities and enforce slavery and segregation.</p>
<p>"If you want to get rid of a number of black people, you go to where they congregate — and that was churches," Gerald Horne, a civil rights historian at the University of Houston, said.</p>
<p>As the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/06/18/for-charlestons-emanuel-a-m-e-church-one-of-the-oldest-in-america-shooting-is-another-painful-chapter-in-long-history/?postshare=7381434622703943">Washington Post's Sarah Kaplan</a> explained, Charleston's Emanuel AME Church was started in 1816 by Morris Brown, a founding pastor of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, who was fed up with the racism he encountered in other churches in the area.</p>
<p><q class="center" aria-hidden="true">"If you want to get rid of a number of black people, you go to where they congregate"</q></p>
<p>The church hosted some of the prominent black activists of the time. <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/denmark-vesey-9517932">Denmark Vesey</a>, a founding member of the church, at one point attempted to lead one of the nation's most famous failed slave uprisings, which would have involved more than 9,000 black slaves. But the revolt was foiled when several slaves turned Vesey in, leading to his capture, a trial, and hanging.</p>
<p>White leaders blamed the attack on the Emanuel AME Church, saying it helped foster the attacks. They instituted harsh laws against black churches, including a ban on all-black services. The congregation was then dispersed, and the church was burned. (The congregation would continue to meet in secret.)</p>
<p>In many ways, the Emanuel AME Church's experience represented the history of black churches in general: it was used to evade the systemic racism of the era, and it was attacked by white leaders who wanted to keep their racist policies in place. "That is a microcosm of how and why churches have become targeted," Horne said.</p>
<p>The attacks of black churches were only a small part of how white supremacists attacked and terrorized black people — often using <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2015/2/10/8014413/lynchings-equal-justice-initiative">lynchings</a> and other sporadic acts of violence to, for example, prevent black people from voting or protesting racist laws like slavery and segregation. These attacks became so common after the Civil War that they led Congress to pass what was essentially the nation's first anti-terrorism law in 1871, the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ku-klux-act-passed-by-congress">Ku Klux Act</a>.</p>
<p>But the attacks on churches — and black people in general — continued through the 19th and 20th centuries, including a <a href="http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/jmd/legacy/2014/06/03/hear-98-1996.pdf">wave of firebombings</a> of black churches in the South in the 1990s and a burning of a black church in Massachusetts the day President Barack Obama was inaugurated, as the <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/thugs-and-terrorists-have-plagued-black-churches-for-generations/396212/?utm_source=SFFB">Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf</a> reported. But perhaps the most well-known attack was in Birmingham, where a bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church left four girls dead.</p>
<h3>Birmingham was at the center of attacks on churches</h3>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/R_X5IZJXnwwIQBjD0FimjkypUTE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3803336/Birmingham%20church.jpg">
<cite><p>Universal Images Group via Getty Images</p></cite>
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<p>The 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, where a bomb killed four girls in 1963.</p>
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<p>Civil rights groups during the early 1960s actively targeted Birmingham for protests, knowing that the city — and the state of Alabama as a whole — was a hub for white supremacy groups and supporters of segregation. The backlash was fierce: Ku Klux Klan members routinely called in bomb threats — and others exploded homemade bombs — to disrupt civil rights meetings and church services, earning Birmingham the nickname "<a href="http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&psid=3326" target="_blank">Bombingham</a>." The anger eventually led to one of the most well-known terrorist attacks of the civil rights movement.</p>
<p>On September 15, 1963, a bomb detonated at the predominantly black 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. About 200 people were in the building, according to <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/birmingham-church-bombing">History.com</a>, many attending Sunday school. Four black girls died, and at least 20 others were injured.</p>
<p>News wire service <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/churches/archives1.htm">UPI</a> described the aftermath in 1963:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Parts of brightly painted children's furniture were strewn about in one Sunday School room, and blood stained the floors. Chunks of concrete the size of footballs littered the basement.</p>
<p>The bomb apparently went off in an unoccupied basement room and blew down the wall, sending stone and debris flying like shrapnel into a room where children were assembling for closing prayers following Sunday School. Bibles and song books lay shredded and scattered through the church.</p>
<p>In the main sanctuary upstairs, which holds about 500 persons, the pulpit and Bible were covered with pieces of stained glass.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was the fourth bombing in Birmingham in four weeks and the 21st in eight years, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/churches/archives1.htm">UPI</a> reported at the time. Up to that point, none of the bombings had been resolved in court.</p>
<h3>It took decades to deliver justice in Birmingham</h3>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/O3QclOb5CbM2n-8PFbHzaM1ymSA=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3803348/Obama%20Birmingham.jpg">
<cite><p>Mike Theiler/Pool via Getty Images</p></cite>
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<p>President Obama designates Congressional Gold Medal to victims of Birmingham church bombing.</p>
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<p>As is emblematic with these types of attacks on black communities, it took very long for victims to get justice. For black communities, this is yet another way they've been oppressed: not only are their churches targets of attacks, but law enforcement acts much more slowly to solve the crimes.</p>
<p>The investigation into the Birmingham church bombing, the most high-profile of the cases, didn't lead to justice for decades. Robert Chambliss was <a href="http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2007/september/bapbomb_092609">convicted</a> to life in prison in 1977, Bobby Cherry and Thomas Blanton were indicted in 2000 and later convicted to life in prison, and a fourth suspect, Herman Cash, died in 1994 before he could face trial.</p>
<p>For some, the feeling of neglect remains. When Congress in 2013 <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/other/congressional-leaders-honor-victims-1963-birmingham-church-bombing-f8C11125636">commemorated</a> the victims of the Birmingham church bombing, some of the survivors and relatives told the <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/survivor-63-ala-church-bombing-seeks-funds-192504908.html">Associated Press's Jay Reeves</a> they weren't interested. Sarah Rudolph said she wanted compensation for the injuries she suffered, including a lost eye, and for the death of her sister, who was one of the girls killed.</p>
<p>"We haven't received anything, and I lost an eye," Rudolph told the AP. "It's a smoke screen to shut us up and make us go away so we'll never be heard from again."</p>
https://www.vox.com/2015/6/18/8805291/charleston-black-church-bombingsGerman Lopez2015-06-26T17:55:35-04:002015-06-26T17:55:35-04:00Read President Obama's moving eulogy for Charleston shooting victim Clementa Pinckney
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<figcaption>Joe Raedle/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p><i>On Friday, June 26, President Obama delivered a powerful eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was murdered in </i><a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/6/17/8802547/mass-shooting-emmanuel-charleston-sc" target="_blank"><i>the Charleston shootings</i></a><i>. In the emotional, wide-ranging speech, Obama connected the mass killing to "a long history" of violence meant to intimidate and terrorize African Americans, and warned that it would be "</i><span><i>a betrayal of everything Reverend Pinckney stood for" if America let itself "go back to business as usual."</i></span></p>
<p><i>The full text of Obama's remarks follows. </i></p>
<p>The Bible calls us to hope. To persevere, and have faith in things not seen.</p>
<p>"They were still living by faith when they died," Scripture tells us. "They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on Earth."</p>
<p>We are here today to remember a man of God who lived by faith. A man who believed in things not seen. A man who believed there were better days ahead, off in the distance. A man of service who persevered, knowing full well he would not receive all those things he was promised, because he believed his efforts would deliver a better life for those who followed.</p>
<p>To Jennifer, his beloved wife; to Eliana and Malana, his beautiful, wonderful daughters; to the Mother Emanuel family and the people of Charleston, the people of South Carolina.<br> <br>I cannot claim to have the good fortune to know Reverend Pinckney well. But I did have the pleasure of knowing him and meeting him here in South Carolina, back when we were both a little bit younger. (Laughter.) Back when I didn't have visible grey hair. (Laughter.) The first thing I noticed was his graciousness, his smile, his reassuring baritone, his deceptive sense of humor -- all qualities that helped him wear so effortlessly a heavy burden of expectation.</p>
<p>Friends of his remarked this week that when Clementa Pinckney entered a room, it was like the future arrived; that even from a young age, folks knew he was special. Anointed. He was the progeny of a long line of the faithful -- a family of preachers who spread God's word, a family of protesters who sowed change to expand voting rights and desegregate the South. Clem heard their instruction, and he did not forsake their teaching.<br> <br>He was in the pulpit by 13, pastor by 18, public servant by 23. He did not exhibit any of the cockiness of youth, nor youth's insecurities; instead, he set an example worthy of his position, wise beyond his years, in his speech, in his conduct, in his love, faith, and purity. <br> <br>As a senator, he represented a sprawling swath of the Lowcountry, a place that has long been one of the most neglected in America. A place still wracked by poverty and inadequate schools; a place where children can still go hungry and the sick can go without treatment. A place that needed somebody like Clem. (Applause.) <br> <br>His position in the minority party meant the odds of winning more resources for his constituents were often long. His calls for greater equity were too often unheeded, the votes he cast were sometimes lonely. But he never gave up. He stayed true to his convictions. He would not grow discouraged. After a full day at the capitol, he'd climb into his car and head to the church to draw sustenance from his family, from his ministry, from the community that loved and needed him. There he would fortify his faith, and imagine what might be.<br> <br>Reverend Pinckney embodied a politics that was neither mean, nor small. He conducted himself quietly, and kindly, and diligently. He encouraged progress not by pushing his ideas alone, but by seeking out your ideas, partnering with you to make things happen. He was full of empathy and fellow feeling, able to walk in somebody else's shoes and see through their eyes. No wonder one of his senate colleagues remembered Senator Pinckney as "the most gentle of the 46 of us -- the best of the 46 of us."<br> <br>Clem was often asked why he chose to be a pastor and a public servant. But the person who asked probably didn't know the history of the AME church. (Applause.) As our brothers and sisters in the AME church know, we don't make those distinctions. "Our calling," Clem once said, "is not just within the walls of the congregation, but...the life and community in which our congregation resides." (Applause.) <br> <br>He embodied the idea that our Christian faith demands deeds and not just words; that the "sweet hour of prayer" actually lasts the whole week long -- (applause) -- that to put our faith in action is more than individual salvation, it's about our collective salvation; that to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and house the homeless is not just a call for isolated charity but the imperative of a just society.<br> <br>What a good man. Sometimes I think that's the best thing to hope for when you're eulogized -- after all the words and recitations and resumes are read, to just say someone was a good man. (Applause.) <br> <br>You don't have to be of high station to be a good man. Preacher by 13. Pastor by 18. Public servant by 23. What a life Clementa Pinckney lived. What an example he set. What a model for his faith. And then to lose him at 41 -- slain in his sanctuary with eight wonderful members of his flock, each at different stages in life but bound together by a common commitment to God. <br> <br>Cynthia Hurd. Susie Jackson. Ethel Lance. DePayne Middleton-Doctor. Tywanza Sanders. Daniel L. Simmons. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton. Myra Thompson. Good people. Decent people. God-fearing people. (Applause.) People so full of life and so full of kindness. People who ran the race, who persevered. People of great faith.<br> <br>To the families of the fallen, the nation shares in your grief. Our pain cuts that much deeper because it happened in a church. The church is and always has been the center of African-American life -- (applause) -- a place to call our own in a too often hostile world, a sanctuary from so many hardships. <br> <br>Over the course of centuries, black churches served as "hush harbors" where slaves could worship in safety; praise houses where their free descendants could gather and shout hallelujah -- (applause) -- rest stops for the weary along the Underground Railroad; bunkers for the foot soldiers of the Civil Rights Movement. They have been, and continue to be, community centers where we organize for jobs and justice; places of scholarship and network; places where children are loved and fed and kept out of harm's way, and told that they are beautiful and smart -- (applause) -- and taught that they matter. (Applause.) That's what happens in church. <br> <br>That's what the black church means. Our beating heart. The place where our dignity as a people is inviolate. When there's no better example of this tradition than Mother Emanuel -- (applause) -- a church built by blacks seeking liberty, burned to the ground because its founder sought to end slavery, only to rise up again, a Phoenix from these ashes. (Applause.)<br> <br>When there were laws banning all-black church gatherings, services happened here anyway, in defiance of unjust laws. When there was a righteous movement to dismantle Jim Crow, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached from its pulpit, and marches began from its steps. A sacred place, this church. Not just for blacks, not just for Christians, but for every American who cares about the steady expansion -- (applause) -- of human rights and human dignity in this country; a foundation stone for liberty and justice for all. That's what the church meant. (Applause.) <br> <br>We do not know whether the killer of Reverend Pinckney and eight others knew all of this history. But he surely sensed the meaning of his violent act. It was an act that drew on a long history of bombs and arson and shots fired at churches, not random, but as a means of control, a way to terrorize and oppress. (Applause.) An act that he imagined would incite fear and recrimination; violence and suspicion. An act that he presumed would deepen divisions that trace back to our nation's original sin.<br> <br>Oh, but God works in mysterious ways. (Applause.) God has different ideas. (Applause.) <br> <br>He didn't know he was being used by God. (Applause.) Blinded by hatred, the alleged killer could not see the grace surrounding Reverend Pinckney and that Bible study group -- the light of love that shone as they opened the church doors and invited a stranger to join in their prayer circle. The alleged killer could have never anticipated the way the families of the fallen would respond when they saw him in court -- in the midst of unspeakable grief, with words of forgiveness. He couldn't imagine that. (Applause.) <br> <br>The alleged killer could not imagine how the city of Charleston, under the good and wise leadership of Mayor Riley -- (applause) -- how the state of South Carolina, how the United States of America would respond -- not merely with revulsion at his evil act, but with big-hearted generosity and, more importantly, with a thoughtful introspection and self-examination that we so rarely see in public life.<br> <br>Blinded by hatred, he failed to comprehend what Reverend Pinckney so well understood -- the power of God's grace. (Applause.) <br> <br>This whole week, I've been reflecting on this idea of grace. (Applause.) The grace of the families who lost loved ones. The grace that Reverend Pinckney would preach about in his sermons. The grace described in one of my favorite hymnals -- the one we all know: Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. (Applause.) I once was lost, but now I'm found; was blind but now I see. (Applause.) <br> <br>According to the Christian tradition, grace is not earned. Grace is not merited. It's not something we deserve. Rather, grace is the free and benevolent favor of God -- (applause) -- as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings. Grace. <br> <br>As a nation, out of this terrible tragedy, God has visited grace upon us, for he has allowed us to see where we've been blind. (Applause.) He has given us the chance, where we've been lost, to find our best selves. (Applause.) We may not have earned it, this grace, with our rancor and complacency, and short-sightedness and fear of each other -- but we got it all the same. He gave it to us anyway. He's once more given us grace. But it is up to us now to make the most of it, to receive it with gratitude, and to prove ourselves worthy of this gift.<br> <br>For too long, we were blind to the pain that the Confederate flag stirred in too many of our citizens. (Applause.) It's true, a flag did not cause these murders. But as people from all walks of life, Republicans and Democrats, now acknowledge -- including Governor Haley, whose recent eloquence on the subject is worthy of praise -- (applause) -- as we all have to acknowledge, the flag has always represented more than just ancestral pride. (Applause.) For many, black and white, that flag was a reminder of systemic oppression and racial subjugation. We see that now. <br> <br>Removing the flag from this state's capitol would not be an act of political correctness; it would not be an insult to the valor of Confederate soldiers. It would simply be an acknowledgment that the cause for which they fought -- the cause of slavery -- was wrong -- (applause) -- the imposition of Jim Crow after the Civil War, the resistance to civil rights for all people was wrong. (Applause.) It would be one step in an honest accounting of America's history; a modest but meaningful balm for so many unhealed wounds. It would be an expression of the amazing changes that have transformed this state and this country for the better, because of the work of so many people of goodwill, people of all races striving to form a more perfect union. By taking down that flag, we express God's grace. (Applause.) <br> <br>But I don't think God wants us to stop there. (Applause.) For too long, we've been blind to the way past injustices continue to shape the present. Perhaps we see that now. Perhaps this tragedy causes us to ask some tough questions about how we can permit so many of our children to languish in poverty, or attend dilapidated schools, or grow up without prospects for a job or for a career. (Applause.) <br> <br>Perhaps it causes us to examine what we're doing to cause some of our children to hate. (Applause.) Perhaps it softens hearts towards those lost young men, tens and tens of thousands caught up in the criminal justice system -- (applause) -- and leads us to make sure that that system is not infected with bias; that we embrace changes in how we train and equip our police so that the bonds of trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve make us all safer and more secure. (Applause.) <br> <br>Maybe we now realize the way racial bias can infect us even when we don't realize it, so that we're guarding against not just racial slurs, but we're also guarding against the subtle impulse to call Johnny back for a job interview but not Jamal. (Applause.) So that we search our hearts when we consider laws to make it harder for some of our fellow citizens to vote. (Applause.) By recognizing our common humanity by treating every child as important, regardless of the color of their skin or the station into which they were born, and to do what's necessary to make opportunity real for every American -- by doing that, we express God's grace. (Applause.) <br> <br>For too long --<br> <br>AUDIENCE: For too long!<br> <br>THE PRESIDENT: For too long, we've been blind to the unique mayhem that gun violence inflicts upon this nation. (Applause.) Sporadically, our eyes are open: When eight of our brothers and sisters are cut down in a church basement, 12 in a movie theater, 26 in an elementary school. But I hope we also see the 30 precious lives cut short by gun violence in this country every single day; the countless more whose lives are forever changed -- the survivors crippled, the children traumatized and fearful every day as they walk to school, the husband who will never feel his wife's warm touch, the entire communities whose grief overflows every time they have to watch what happened to them happen to some other place. <br> <br>The vast majority of Americans -- the majority of gun owners -- want to do something about this. We see that now. (Applause.) And I'm convinced that by acknowledging the pain and loss of others, even as we respect the traditions and ways of life that make up this beloved country -- by making the moral choice to change, we express God's grace. (Applause.) <br> <br>We don't earn grace. We're all sinners. We don't deserve it. (Applause.) But God gives it to us anyway. (Applause.) And we choose how to receive it. It's our decision how to honor it. <br> <br>None of us can or should expect a transformation in race relations overnight. Every time something like this happens, somebody says we have to have a conversation about race. We talk a lot about race. There's no shortcut. And we don't need more talk. (Applause.) None of us should believe that a handful of gun safety measures will prevent every tragedy. It will not. People of goodwill will continue to debate the merits of various policies, as our democracy requires -- this is a big, raucous place, America is. And there are good people on both sides of these debates. Whatever solutions we find will necessarily be incomplete.<br> <br>But it would be a betrayal of everything Reverend Pinckney stood for, I believe, if we allowed ourselves to slip into a comfortable silence again. (Applause.) Once the eulogies have been delivered, once the TV cameras move on, to go back to business as usual -- that's what we so often do to avoid uncomfortable truths about the prejudice that still infects our society. (Applause.) To settle for symbolic gestures without following up with the hard work of more lasting change -- that's how we lose our way again. <br> <br>It would be a refutation of the forgiveness expressed by those families if we merely slipped into old habits, whereby those who disagree with us are not merely wrong but bad; where we shout instead of listen; where we barricade ourselves behind preconceived notions or well-practiced cynicism.<br> <br>Reverend Pinckney once said, "Across the South, we have a deep appreciation of history -- we haven't always had a deep appreciation of each other's history." (Applause.) What is true in the South is true for America. Clem understood that justice grows out of recognition of ourselves in each other. That my liberty depends on you being free, too. (Applause.) That history can't be a sword to justify injustice, or a shield against progress, but must be a manual for how to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past -- how to break the cycle. A roadway toward a better world. He knew that the path of grace involves an open mind -- but, more importantly, an open heart. <br> <br>That's what I've felt this week -- an open heart. That, more than any particular policy or analysis, is what's called upon right now, I think -- what a friend of mine, the writer Marilyn Robinson, calls "that reservoir of goodness, beyond, and of another kind, that we are able to do each other in the ordinary cause of things." <br> <br>That reservoir of goodness. If we can find that grace, anything is possible. (Applause.) If we can tap that grace, everything can change. (Applause.) <br> <br>Amazing grace. Amazing grace.<br> <br>(Begins to sing) -- Amazing grace -- (applause) -- how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me; I once was lost, but now I'm found; was blind but now I see. (Applause.) <br> <br>Clementa Pinckney found that grace. <br> <br>Cynthia Hurd found that grace. <br> <br>Susie Jackson found that grace. <br> <br>Ethel Lance found that grace. <br> <br>DePayne Middleton-Doctor found that grace.<br> <br>Tywanza Sanders found that grace. <br> <br>Daniel L. Simmons, Sr. found that grace. <br> <br>Sharonda Coleman-Singleton found that grace. <br> <br>Myra Thompson found that grace.<br> <br>Through the example of their lives, they've now passed it on to us. May we find ourselves worthy of that precious and extraordinary gift, as long as our lives endure. May grace now lead them home. May God continue to shed His grace on the United States of America. (Applause.)</p>
<h3>Watch: What makes the Charleston shooting terrorism</h3>
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https://www.vox.com/2015/6/26/8854855/read-full-text-obamas-eulogy-charleston-shootingEzra Klein2015-06-26T16:40:02-04:002015-06-26T16:40:02-04:00Obama's sick of the "conversation about race," too
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<p><a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2015/6/26/8853457/obama-amazing-grace">President Obama gave a eulogy Friday for Rev. Clementa Pinckney,</a> the South Carolina state senator and pastor who was <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2015/6/17/8802547/mass-shooting-emmanuel-charleston-sc">killed, along with eight others, in a racially motivated June 17</a> mass shooting.</p>
<p>In his speech, he said, "<span>Every time something like this happens somebody says we have to have a conversation about race. We talk a lot about race. There's no shortcut. We don't need more talk."</span></p>
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<span class="s-related__title">Related</span> <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2015/4/23/8482799/systemic-racism-explained-examples">Finally, an explanation of systemic racism that won't put you to sleep </a> <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2014/12/26/7443979/racism-implicit-racial-bias">What is implicit bias?</a>
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<p><span>He was seemingly referring to the way nearly every time a story about racism — revelations that police officers let biases affect their work, data on shocking disparities, celebrities who late their hateful views slip — </span><span>makes headlines, s</span><span>omeone calls for a </span><a target="_blank" href="http://www.latimes.com/news/la-oe-goldberg25mar25-column.html" style="font-family: Balto, Helvetica, Arial, 'Nimbus Sans L', sans-serif; font-size: 14.9999990463257px; line-height: 1.65;">"national conversation on race" or a "dialogue on race."</a></p>
<p>That response is well-intended, but it's also frustrating, because so much of racial injustice is fueled by the policies and deeply held beliefs that fuel systemic racism — and debating the definition of "racist" (that's normally how the conversation goes) doesn't make those go away.</p>
<p><span>To many Americans and, evidently, to President Obama, the tragedy in Charleston is just the latest reminder.</span></p>
https://www.vox.com/2015/6/26/8853843/obama-charleston-eulogy-raceJenée Desmond-Harris