Charleston church massacre memorial in works

In this June 19, 2015 , file photo, the men of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Inc. lead a crowd of people in prayer outside Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, after a memorial service for the nine people killed by Dylann Roof in Charleston, S.C.
In this June 19, 2015 , file photo, the men of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Inc. lead a crowd of people in prayer outside Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, after a memorial service for the nine people killed by Dylann Roof in Charleston, S.C.

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- Three years after a race-motivated mass shooting in its fellowship hall -- and 200 years after its founding as one of the South's first black congregations -- Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston unveiled designs Sunday for a contemplative memorial to the nine victims and five survivors of the horrific attack.

As envisioned by architect Michael Arad, who also designed the National September 11 Memorial in lower Manhattan, sections of the church's parking lot would be transformed into two meditative spaces, one a stone memorial courtyard, the other a grassy survivors' garden. Together they would speak to the suffering and resilience of a church that has outlasted two centuries of persecution through its practice of faith and forgiveness.

The focal point of the memorial is a pair of sleekly curving high-backed pews, carved of white marble, that would welcome visitors from Calhoun Street like outstretched arms. Some congregants have seen in them a pair of angels' wings, or even the hull of a slave ship.

Arad, a New York-based partner with Handel Architects, said the plan was "intended to promote a sense of community, that when you walk into this space, you become a member of this congregation."

At the center will be an ovate fountain whose waters wash over the inscribed names of the worshippers who were killed on June 17, 2015: the Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, the Rev. DePayne Middleton Doctor, Cynthia Hurd, Ethel Lee Lance, Susie Jackson, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Tywanza Sanders, the Rev. Daniel Simmons and Myra Thompson.

The memorial would take the place of the asphalt lot where Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white supremacist, parked his car before walking through an unsecured door to join a Bible study session in progress. He waited until the congregants closed their eyes in benediction, took a handgun out of a waist pack and began firing. When he was captured the next day, Roof confessed that his goal had been to incite a race war. He offered no defense at his trial in federal court and received a death sentence in January 2017, which he is appealing.

To make the memorial project a reality, a foundation connected to the church now must raise an estimated $15 million to $20 million, according to John Darby, a local developer who is a co-chairman of the campaign along with Emanuel's pastor, the Rev. Eric S.C. Manning. That money would pay for construction costs and for establishing an endowment for maintenance and security as well as educational programming, Darby said. A leadoff pledge of $1 million has been made by the Robert and Janice McNair Foundation. McNair, who attended the University of South Carolina, owns the Houston Texans.

Since the shootings, which many church members refer to simply as "the tragedy," Sunday attendance at Emanuel has been bolstered by a steady flow of visitors, black and white, who come to commune and pay their respects. But much of the core membership of Mother Emanuel, as the church is affectionately known, has been dislocated far from downtown by rapid gentrification in the city. That has created some fiscal challenges for the church, and Manning said he was determined not to let the memorial become a recurring burden.

"We will want to have the best possible support from the community, and dare we even say, the world," he said. "This memorial will not just remind the congregation of what we have gone through but also remind the world that forgiveness is, of course, very important."

Arad has made about a dozen trips to Charleston in the last year to study the Emanuel site and the city's distinctive architecture. He has also consulted at length with the congregation's leadership, the survivors and families of the victims. Consensus on the design was not immediate, but it came.

Arad's design was presented after morning services at the church Sunday, capping a week of events to commemorate the congregation's bicentennial. The church dates its founding to 1818, when free and enslaved blacks who had withdrawn from Charleston's Methodist church over discriminatory worship practices affiliated with the recently formed African Methodist Episcopal denomination and became the latter's first congregation in the South.

The church and its leaders were harassed by authorities, and their original wood-frame church building was destroyed in 1822 because of its role in incubating a failed slave insurrection. The accused plotters, many of them church members, were hanged.

The congregation reconstituted itself immediately after the Civil War, and named itself Emanuel -- "God with us." It remained a refuge and a center of resistance throughout Reconstruction, the Jim Crow era and the struggle for civil rights.

The survivors' garden planned by Arad is surrounded by marble benches. One is for each of the three women and two children who escaped Roof's rampage: Pinckney's widow, Jennifer Benjamin Pinckney, and one of their daughters; Tywanza Sanders' mother, Felicia Sanders, and her young granddaughter; and a longtime church stalwart, Polly Sheppard.

And there will be a sixth survivor's bench. It represents Mother Emanuel herself.

photo

AP File Photo/STEPHEN B. MORTON

In this June 18, 2015, file photo, a group of women prays together at a makeshift memorial on the sidewalk in front of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. The historic South Carolina church — where nine black worshippers were slain — unveiled the design for a memorial to the victims on Sunday as part of its 200th anniversary celebration.

Religion on 07/21/2018

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