Phil Hudgins, Guest column
 |
It’s June 17, 2025, as I write this. It’s the 10th anniversary of the night a white supremacist walked into a predominantly Black church in Charleston, S.C., pretended to pray with the parishioners, and then shot and killed nine of them.
Eliana Pinckney was 11 years old. Clementa Pinckney was her father. He was one of the nine killed. He was the church’s pastor.
Five years later, Eliana said: “It’s already hard to lose someone you love, but it’s even harder to grow up without a father knowing that he lost his life in a place that he devoted his entire life to.”
Today, at 21 and another five years later, she said this when asked if she had forgiven her father’s killer: “I think forgiveness is a really hard thing and a hard concept. Instead of having a sense of hatred or animosity toward him, I honestly wish for growth for him and anyone surrounded by him.”
By using the word “growth” during a television interview, I think she was saying she wished Dylann Roof, the killer, and everyone else like him – people filled with prejudice and hate – would grow out of dismissing human beings just because they’re
different.
I watched that interview this morning, and I couldn’t get Eliana’s words out of my mind. Here is a young woman who lost her father, someone who certainly could justify hating the man who killed him, but who simply wishes he could dispose of his hatefulness.
Just as impressive is the grace shown at Roof’s bond hearing, when several family members of victims said to the killer, “I forgive you.”
Dylann Roof told investigators he hoped to start a race war. What he started was a revival of faith, a wave of forgiveness among people who expected their Wednesday night prayer meeting on June 17, 2015, to end like all the others, with hope and gratitude, not with violence and death.
They had welcomed Roof, these members of Mother Emanuel AME Church. The pastor even invited the young man to sit beside him. He wanted Roof to feel at home, comfortable.
“Nothing to be fearful of,” Sylvia Johnson, the minister’s cousin, said in 2015. “This is the house of the Lord, and you are welcome.”
Sometimes it’s not a difference in color, but a difference in beliefs. A few weeks ago, a man impersonating a police officer killed one Minnesota lawmaker at her home and wounded another in what was described as a planned attack on politicians in three other states. All of those politicians were Democrats.
Republican President Donald Trump narrowly escaped death on July 13, 2024, when a bullet from a hater grazed his right ear.
Hate is no respecter of persons. Schoolchildren, police officers, Jewish worshipers and many others have been targets. But we can’t live with constant fear.
Perhaps we should listen to Eliana Pinckney. We should “wish for growth” for those who hate others just because they – or their beliefs – are different. If nothing else, we could pray for more tolerance in all of our lives.
Phil Hudgins is senior editor of Community Newspapers Inc. Email phudgins@cninewspapers.com.