Two separate huge collections of correspondence and artwork capture the world’s grief-stricken responses to the 2015 tragedy that took the lives of nine members of Emanuel AME Church.
Dozens of gray archival boxes at the South Carolina Historical Society (SCHS) hold tens of thousands of cards, letters and drawings mailed to the church within weeks of the June 17, 2015, shooting deaths of the church members, including their pastor, the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney.
Across the street from the church, several hundred pieces of artwork, which evoke religious themes and the personalities of those who died, are displayed in the Mother Emanuel Historic Foundation Museum at 113 Calhoun St.
The memorabilia and art were sent to Emanuel and made by people who wanted to share their feelings, said church historian Lee Bennett Jr. It has been a slow, daunting task for Bennett and volunteers to move items from storage sites around Charleston and display some of them in one location, he explained.
The collection at the SCHS archives at the College of Charleston is in its final stages of being processed before some of it becomes available to the public, which is expected within a year. Just down the street, the Emanuel museum exhibits in a three-story house on Calhoun Street are expected to open later this year by appointment with Bennett.
“It is a little overwhelming when you look at the (number) of people who took the time to express their love and spread positive messages,” Bennett told the Charleston City Paper in an exclusive interview. Letters came from people who were dealing with their own grief, including the mothers of twenty children who were murdered on Dec. 14, 2012, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.
A Birmingham letter
One of the letters in the SCHS collection came from former U.S. secretary of state and national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, who experienced a similar tragedy in 1963 in her native Birmingham, Ala., when White supremacists bombed a church, killing four Black girls, including her schoolmate 11-year-old Denise McNair.
“I remember well, as a little girl, the awful events of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church,” Rice wrote to the Emanuel congregation. “The violation of a house of the Lord is so shocking and like that day in 1963, it has forced us to confront, once again, the face of evil.”
In a thematically related submission, the iconic octagon-shaped clock at Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church is subtly placed in Atlanta artist Leroy Campbell’s massive painting – “The Bible Study.” The painting hangs on the wall on the second floor of the foundation’s museum next to a portrait of Pinckney. Two men support the outstretched wings of a grieving female angel whose robe is adorned with pictures of the Emanuel Nine, Bible verses and spiritual lyrics.
“This painting ‘Bible Study’ was not a creation of my doing,” according to the text of Campbell’s explanation of the painting. “I was seeking counsel from (the victims) as ancestors, on how to deal with the pain, how to keep going after this horrific act.”
An act of unity
The Rev. Anthony B. Thompson’s wife, Myra Thompson, was one of Emanuel’s nine victims.
“It was good to know that people from around the world tried … to comfort us through the letters and through the art,” said Thompson, retired pastor of Holy Trinity Reformed Episcopal Church. “I really did appreciate that. It really did help. It brought me through my pain, and I was happy to know it brought people together.”
Thompson is the co-author of Called to Forgive: The Charleston Church Shooting, a Victim’s Husband, and the Path to Healing and Peace. In the book, Thompson delves into grief and how and why he made the radical choice to forgive the shooter.
An 8-foot by 8-foot quilt is an example of how the tragedy brought people together for a purpose. The quilt is made from small rectangular patches of fabric from more than 500 quilt artists from around the country. The faint stitching in it forms the lyrics of Amazing Grace. The Charleston Modern Quilt Guild donated the quilt. It is on a custom-made table in a second-level gallery with nine abstract portraits of the Emanuel Nine. Symbols in each portrait signify the church member’s personality or profession.
Crosses of varying sizes crowd the walls in a small room on the second level.
Stuffed animals, posters, banners, and paper hearts are stored on the museum’s third level. Some of those items, Bennett said, may go on display. Many of the stored items were left outside the church in the days after the tragedy.
Emanuel’s imposing edifice is the theme in the first-floor gallery where a model of the church sits on a stand in the middle of the room with walls bearing photos, drawings and paintings of the church.
A place for inquiry
Virginia Ellison, the SCHS’s director of collections and chief operating officer, said graduate students and scholars might pull interesting research topics from the thousands of pages of Emanuel correspondence.
They might want to investigate how many different countries responded to the tragedy and how its citizens expressed their grief.
“God, have mercy on humanity,” Esteban wrote from Cuba. “Please accept my heartfelt condolences. I am a great friend to Black people in the United States, and I believe that there is room for all of us in this stormy world, filled with thorns and pain.”
The collection may answer how many different religions are represented in it and which Bible verses were most often cited. But Gabriel in National City, Calif., may represent people who do not follow any religion, writing: “I pray that God gives you strength in this time of need,” he wrote. “I’m admittedly not very religious nor am I even Christian – but I still have great reverence and respect for a house of worship.”
Legendary screenwriter Norman Lear used a television sitcom to send pithy social commentary into American homes in the 1970s. Lear’s fictional character, Archie Bunker, a bigoted protagonist in All in the Family, served as a foil for his liberal son-in-law, Michael. Archie claimed a belief in God when it served his purposes.
Lear, who died in late 2023, was a member of the board of the progressive advocacy group, People For the American Way (PFAW). In a letter to church leaders, Lear wrote: “Please know that even as Rev. Pinckney was a member of the PFAW family, I will think of myself in his name as a member” of Emanuel.
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