High Fives Over Hate Crimes: Revisiting The Charleston Emmanuel AME Shooting

I always enjoyed the steeples in Charleston.  Take any carriage tour and you’ll hear all about them.  Some of the facts and stories the driver tells you might even be true.  You’ll hear there’s a city ordinance demanding no building to reach higher than the pointed tops of the many variety of church’s.  How Charleston, The Holy City, encouraged population growth when it was first settled by allowing religious freedom leading to over 400 different kinds of worship.

Rooftop bars will give you an eye to eye view of these giants and regardless of your perspective, boat, plane, or feet, you can always spy a few.  If you’re on the water and position yourself just right you can see 11 of these steeples at once from all the way across the harbor.  Coming over the Ravenel Bridge or flying into CHS the best way to find your house is to locate the closest Steeple and make your way from there.  The closest steeple to 19 Menotti belongs to the Mother Emanuel AME Church, where on June 15th, 2015 9 people were killed while attending a prayer service.

I would always park my car on Menotti Street and look through a row of houses to the steeple of Mother Emanuel.  Like a real life mood ring depending on how the sun hit it.  Dark shutters on the spire juxtaposed the snow white bell tower and adjoining church.   Bright and white in the morning against a humid blue sky on my way to work.  Silhouetted jet black against a burnt orange sunset when I’d park after a long day on the water.

I had just returned from hosting my radio show with my mom who had been a guest.  The show was uneventful but it was a treat to have my mom in the studio, charming as could be in her unassuming way.

My extended family was vacationing in Hilton Head, a 2 hour drive away through lowland marsh and we stopped at Menotti to pick some stuff up before we headed down to meet them.  I remember getting in the car at 8:55, stopping before opening the door and my mom smiled and looked over at me.

“I love those steeples, it’s quite the welcome home,” she said.

“ Yeah,  I love how they change color throughout the day and how they jet into the sky. Quintessential Charleston.”

I had gotten home and looked at that church hundreds of times but never said anything to anyone about it.  Minutes later the entire country would hear all about the Mother Emanuel AME church located on 110 Calhoun Streeet and the tragedy that occurred inside.

About twenty minutes into our drive Bryan called me and I answered.  With nervous laughter he told me SWAT was searching our neighborhood with police dogs.  He wasn’t sure what had happened but early reports of some type of shooting had started to make their way around.

I put down my phone and stared at the empty highway ahead not giving it too much thought.  The details seemed too vague to be concerning yet.  My mom asked and I told her the details but I wasn’t too worried.  I tried to refresh twitter on my phone but I was barely getting any service and my internet wasn’t working.

Ten minutes later Bryan called again with a much more serious tone.  He told me how some guy went into that church across the street and killed a bunch of people.  The perpetrator was still on the loose and a nationwide search had ensued.  Reports were out that it was racially motivated but nothing was confirmed.  Twitter on my phone still wouldn’t update because of bad service.  I tried with more frequency and nerves.

 It’s interesting how the details of something can change the way you process it.  Ten minutes earlier someone was shot and it was the kind of sad that raised your eyebrow for a second only to forget it as soon as I started looking for a new song on Spotify.  Add in race and religion and increase the body count and there was a tremendous and different weight.  I didn’t have any real affiliation with the Emanuel AME church or the people involved but it was still in my neighborhood, and that neighborhood was the only other place I ever called home.

“ I didn’t have any real affiliation with the Emanuel AME church or the people involved but it was still in my neighborhood, and that neighborhood was the only other place I ever called home.”

I told my mom and she asked some questions I didn’t know the answers to.  I talked to Bryan probably ten times that night and was up late into the early hours of morning scouring the internet for any details I could find.  Information was slowly leaking making it’s way to national news by sunrise.

There had been plenty of shootings in my neighborhood growing up, but nothing that was so obviously racially motivated and wide spread.  When we heard gunshots or saw someone die in Westwood it was always just far enough away that it didn’t always feel real.  The word mass shooting hadn’t entered my vocabulary.

Before the Emanuel AME shooting I always kind of rolled my eyes when people would talk about how they could “feel” the community hurt after similar tragedies and other cliches of the sort.  It’s not that I didn’t feel terrible for the people directly affected by what happened, I just always felt a little fanfare in the #(INSERTCITY)STRONG that seemed a little unauthentic. But now that it happened in my neighborhood to my city I understood how something tragic happening in your community doesn’t have to happen to you for it to make you think and feel and hurt.  I felt a little guilty for my previously immature judgment.  It lacked empathy, even if it understood sympathy.

My parents drove me back from Hilton Head a few days after the shooting and I took them on a kayak tour.  It had been a long 12 hour day and even though the tour itself was enjoyable, I was tired and wanted to get home.  We pulled out of the parking lot and headed toward the peninsula and got stuck in unusual heavy traffic.

I was annoyed it was taking so long, we were initially moving about half a mile per hour until I started noticing people on the sidewalks.  What is going on?  I remember thinking.  This number dramatically increased the closer we got to the bridge.  The backup was caused by the kind of experience that makes you believe in humanity.

Tens of thousands of Charlestonians walked the Ravenel Bridge, together.  I can’t describe it in any other way but magical.  My mom cried, my dad rubbed her back and drove, and I remember just looking at this giant 3 mile long bridge packed with people.

2 rows going opposite directions and everyone was giving each other high fives!  Cars were honking, people were singing, Stephen Colbert and his wife made an appearance, flags were waving.  It was like the healing version of a World Series parade.   The commute home took 2 hours, and after 30 minutes of honest to God just staring out at the world speechless I couldn’t stop smiling.   One of those moments where, when I close my eyes, I can still feel my back sticking to the seat in the car, I can smell the mix of sunscreen and sweat and pine and gasoline, I can hear the noise of a bridge full of love.

The entire city seemed to have walked this bridge for no other reason than to high five their fellow citizens and to say we’re here for you.  Killing is wrong and high fives are right.  It didn’t make everything better, but I’d be lying to you if I didn’t say I think it helped.

In my walks past the Emanuel AME church over the next three months, not a day went by without new flowers and candles being added to the already extensive collection.  The prayers and respects were paid by every race, religion, and social class Charleston had to offer.

I didn’t know any parishioners of Emanuel AME and I certainly didn’t have any type of relationship with anyone directly affected by this tragedy - but I could feel it.  I could feel the hurt and the grief, and then for the next few months I could feel the love and the healing.  I changed the route I took to get groceries and to go on runs and to get to the bars so I could walk past it as frequently as possible.  Like shooting a text to a friend who's hurting, walking by was my own way of trying to show that I was there with them.  That they were far from alone during a time of (what I can only imagine) incredible loneliness.  I didn’t know these people but they were my neighbors and because they were my neighbors I had love for them. 

I was not the only person in Charleston who did this and the crowds of people at any given time of day would be dropping off flowers, donations, or handing out water.  People were drawn there not to ogle but to lift, to grieve, to love.  It furthered my belief that there is such a thing as positive energy in this world, the kind that isn’t tangible but is real and capable and impacts our emotions for the better.
On kayak tours people always asked about it and then when they found out I lived 200 yards away they really asked about it.  Unlike most tours I didn’t really have a script.  Does anyone?  I would tell them the best way to experience it is to go there.  If they could donate or leave flowers or bring lunches for the volunteers even better.  I hope some of them went.
People sat in lawn chairs, usually used for Folly Beach or Sullivan Island sand dwelling, and handed out free bottles of water to those who came to pay their respects in the blazing heat.  They didn’t capitalize on it, they didn’t pimp out this flush of people to make a quick buck.  They just gave people water and told them to have a “most blessed day!”

“There was a solid two months straight where a group of people stayed 24/7 just to make sure someone was always there.”

At night I would open my window, piping hot Charleston pouring in, just to hear the hymns being sung well past midnight.  There was a solid two months straight where a group of people stayed 24/7 just to make sure someone was always there.  Day and night, rain or shine these people would be there, and they would often be letting their beautiful voices rip.  A real life lullaby that you could gently hear throughout an entire neighborhood.

I remember one particular evening after showering and laying down in bed.  It was exceptionally hot and I thought about getting out of bed to shut the window as a bead of sweat gathered on my forehead.  Before I could get up, an acapella version of America the Beautiful echoed through the window by a single male tenor.  I think of this beautiful moment in my life often.  I can still hear the voice when I lay down at the end of a long day, when my mind drifts and I’m hit by a breeze of humidity.

The talking heads of big media continued to report and speculate and create noise and take up parking on Menotti for a few weeks but Charleston took the love momentum from the bridge and forged ahead.

Nadine Collier, daughter of victim Ethel Lance, when confronting the terrorist didn’t scream and curse or hate.  She forgave.  Without ever meeting her I’m honored to have been her neighbor.  She is a hero of mine when I reflect on what it means to forgive, to be better than the people that wrong you.  

When a small Southern City was pushed into the national spotlight by an unspeakable act, it followed the example embodied by Ms. Collier.  It grieved, it loved, it forgave, and because of that I think it started to heal. One high five at a time.

If you would like to donate to the Mother Emanuel AME church please visit www.motheremanuel.com/support 

if you find yourself in town, I encourage you to stop by.