Transcripts For CSPAN2 Jennifer Hawes Grace Will Lead Us Hom

Continues. Now jennifer because on the 2015 shooting at emmanuel ame church in charleston, South Carolina. I want to thank all of you for coming tonight. Im happy to see you. I want to think barnes and noble for having me here tonight. Its an honor to be in the company of fabulous authors. I see some old friends out there, i see some new friends out there and some people i know who were directly affected by this tragedy. Why dont i tell you about the book, im happy to take questions. Ill read a bit from the book and i want to hear what you have to say and what you would like for me to answer. When we dive right in . This book is about june 17, 2015. This is the beginning of the story. That night was an especially hot night. It was about 8 00 p. M. When a young white man with a bowl haircut parked outside of annual ame church. If you dont live here, this is a Historic Black Church in the heart of downtown. It was summertime, the city was filled with tourists. Kids were out of school in the city was starting to quiet a bit for the night when he slipped into a side door and went toward the fellowship hall. There were 12 people getting ready to start their bible study. There were several of the purchased members, most of the churches staff and an 11yearold girl. They sat down and welcomed him, figuring if he was there to hear the word of god, they would welcome him and they did. We now know hims name with dylan and he was a white supremacist. He sat for about an hour with them. Theres a story in mark for about jesus teaching what happens when you pass seeds of faith on two different kinds of terrain. If you put on rocky soil, the seeds wither up and die. If you cast the seeds onto fertile soil, it will grow and flourish. He sat for about an hour and didnt say anything. When they shut their eyes for the closing prayer, he reached into a tactical pouch on his waist and pulled out a gun. He shot the Senior Pastor who is sitting right beside him, the state senator and then he proceeded to shoot other, eight other people, mostly middleaged and elderly women as they were, they have these round foldout tables. Three of the people in that room survived. Two were adult women and one was a child. One of the women was felicia sanders. Felicia grabbed her grand daughter and pulled her beneath the table and played dead. She told her to play dead and they did. As her loved ones were shot around her. The other women, ali was about seven and she was also hiding under the table. She watched his boots come toward her until he stopped and asked, if i chopped you get and she said no. He said im not going to, im going to leave you here to tell the story. Then he left. This was about 9 00 p. M. On wednesday night and i was getting ready for bed that night. I had no idea the terror they were experiencing. Until i started to see tweets on my twitter feed. There was a shooting at church downtown, there was a shooting at mother emmanuel. Then it became clear there were multiple people dead. I had been with the paper for a number of years so i was familiar enough that i knew if there were multiple people dead and if this was a stranger that the history was going to be very important. So that night, i began doing research. The first story i wrote was about 1 00 a. M. About how emmanuel was the Oldest Church in the south and after the civil war the congregation which was driven to worship underground chose to name emmanuel, which means god with us. So for about four years now, i have covered this tragedy for the newspaper and while writing this book and decided to start that book that night because it was such an unimaginable moment. A big moment in our citys history. But its really only the beginning. So that shooting is the start of the story but i tried to tell a story thats much broader, more personal, more nuanced. Remember it was captured the next morning. Then there was a bond hearing. Four of the victims family members spoke and they all spoke words of forgiveness and christian mercy and love and grace and it was a beautiful moment. It was heard all around the country, around the world really. The next day, someone found the shooters website. So we learned all about his racist views, pictures of him holding the Confederate Flag up as im sure many of you have seen. I was obviously disturbing moment. These two storylines came to the tragedy, forgiveness on one hand and forgiveness racist on the other side. It was a lot more complicated. As i got to know some of the family members and survivors, i realized what they were dealing with was a lot more complicated. Thats what i wanted to get across in this book. These tragedies are kind of like throwing a rock into a pond, what happens . You see at impact and then these rings radiate across the surface of the water that can even cover the entire surface of the water. I started to think about this many times, when i was talking with the survivors and families, they were not only dealing with grief and trauma also they were living under this new unbelievably intense spotlight. I remember felicia said one day, telling me that a woman at church said Something Like well, youre a movie star now, or you are like a movie star now. It bothered her because she definitely didnt want to be a movie star, especially on the back of a tragedy. Felicia wanted to have her son back and her cousin back and all of them back. She wanted her old life back where she was a Church Volunteer in her mother and a grandmother and a hairdresser. Instead, there were newspaper articles, documentaries, magazine stories, speaking engagements. It felt like everything was different. I realized when i was talking with police, they were responding to an active shooter call and did not know if they would come out alive, they didnt know what they would see but they went in anyway. I remember talking to one of them, he was describing holding one of their hands as the young man died, stayed with bodies all night long. They cleared out the building so they could investigate. He refused to leave. I wondered how did that not change his life . How did it not change his colleagues life and all of the people around him . I realized this while i was talking to the medical staff a few blocks away in the trauma bay, when they got the call, they sent out a number of beds and had teams ready to go to save the people shot. One of them was brought in his wounds were too devastating. They were not able to save him despite tremendous effort. They waited and waited and nobody else came in because everybody else who had been shot, died there. So i thought, how do those medical workers go on and not remember this every time they deal with another trauma . How do they not think differently about their jobs . I thought about nikki haley, she described hearing the updates all night long, each one worse than the last. Then the next morning waking up her children and telling them what happened before she came to charleston and addressed the state. So i thought, how does it not affect their children the next time they go to church . I remember talking with the Police Lieutenant. There was a Police Lieutenant who went and dug through the trash from the crime scene to get felicias bible back because it meant that much to felicia to have it again. How does it not change that lieutenants life for her life . I remember speaking with the jurors. They sat through a week long trial that was very grueling. They got to see crime scene photos. They will not ever forget those photos and neither will i or anybody else was there in that courtroom. This seemed to go on and on and on across that are dealing with these kind of tragedies in the aftermath. So, what city, what house of worship or church will be next. Thats what i started thinking about. But also if you look back at history this shooting in particular reminds me of an event about 55 years ago now at 16th Street Baptist Church in alabama and if you remember this was a tragedy in which members planted a bomb outside of the church. It was a sunday, and it was a special sunday because in the life of the church that they, the children would play a special role in the service and a member of little girls were getting ready in the rest room and when the bomb exploded, four of them were killed in. Three of the little girls families held a joint funeral and he spoke at the funeral and said we also, they also want us to be concerned not only with who murdered them but with the systems and way of life into the philosophy which produced. So, i know for a fact the families involved want the same for their loved ones, and get they have seen the country continue to struggle with racism and hate crimes, theyve continued to see White Supremacists target other houses of worship. Not that long ago in pittsburgh we had a shooting at the synagogue there and at another synagogue out in california. And really as far as new zeala zealand. But i can tell you there have been changes its just they are more personal kind of changes. For instance, one thing youll read about in the book is the survivors left the church and she went essentially to the predominantly white church almost right next door but because it remained such a segregated hour of the week she had never even been inside the church. She grew up just blocks away but now her family goes to the church. The other survivor the tree of life shootings last fall in october, and i think it was around january she went into the synagogue and wanted to offer comfort to people and also explained to them what they could expect and explain what she had been through. It came down to emmanuelle on Martin Luther king weekend to worship with they got together and started holding a book study which sometimes had people who otherwise may never come into contact with one another. They get together. I hope youll read about a you a little bit more in this book. The end result could be i hope and we could all hope there might be a reunion of people that comes out of something so terrible but we also know they wanted to reinstitute segregation. So these kind of things that bring us together can have the opposite effect of what he wanted. And that could turn out to be very beautiful. Let me say one other thing. This book has my name on it but its the result of a partnership between the posting career and Saint Martins press in new york they were involved in covering the tragedy, the reporters, photographers, the digital crew, lots of people that do great work and i drew on their work. One of the things we want to do is take the proceeds from the book and begin an Internship Program for journalism students of color to come and learn from us. I have to brag about the newspaper for a minute because im very proud of the work we do. The posting career has been the winner or the finalist for the Pulitzer Prize more times in the past five years than most of the major metropolitan newspapers in the country. And you know the newspapers across america are making deep cuts in their newsrooms. But we are lucky at the boston career theyve been investing in the newsroom, hiring reporters, trying to broaden the reach is strong journalism can continue to exist. So my hope is that students will come join us for the summer and then stay with us when they graduate so that this could be one more way that something good can come out of a terrible tragedy. So, ive opened the door to questions. I dont want to go on and on and not answer what you would like to know. If i could have one take away i hope that ca it can tell you a e complete story of the story sinca story sincehow many of yot of you probably know the basics of this unless [inaudible] if you have a question can you ask it in the microphone because they are recording and they would like to be able to hear you. One of the stunning things you found iwefound in reporting the. I think the most stunning thing for me is the fact that people were not hurting because of the shooting but because of him a lot of other things that were happening. There was fallout between the survivors and family members in the church. There i was division in one of e families if you imagine throwing a boulder into your family like this, every positive relationship is magnified by a million times in every relationship is magnified by a million times. People dont respond to trauma saying, but the one thing i found pretty universal among the families that i got to know well enough to know this was that everything was tightened, every emotion was heightened so there were divisions within the families. As i said there were divisions between the families and the church, so they are heard and it was more complicated than i realized at the beginning of this. I know a lot of people since loving things and pictures and at one time, they were going to do a museum and show things. Is that still going on kind of like the africanamerican music and they are building a possible place where are they going to do their own thing . They are working with a company to build a memorial outside of the church which will provide a place where people can go to be in the presence of the church, pray and remember the people who died. There is a story the church has put all that stuff in safekeeping and they are attempting to archive and catalog it. So all that stuff is safe and sound, and it will be displayed in some fashion and they are trying to figure that out now. Reading your book since ive been sitting here and from the beginning use of your children went to School Across from the church and he went to the church. Have you ever been in emmanuelle before then . I had not been inside before that. That is a good question. And you know, interestingly i thought back about that question and one of our colleagues died and iran are to seeing his funeral from the outside so when i thought why havent i been, i had interviewed the reverend before, but it was over the telephone. And so, i thought to your point, why is that. I had been in many churches but why havent i been inside emanuel ax part of it is story selection. Thats what i mean by our staff has to do a better job before reflecting the community that we serve and part of the reason for that is because everybody brings to the table and our newsroom different ideas and of those ideas sometimes are based on the news and dictated by whats happening. The. Really the only thing we could think it think of i have had the church that day but he wasnt physically there. That is the kind of input that would be useful for us to have. I was born and raised in the south. For this to happen is tragic and i thought where do all these people come from now. Its sad that the people hadnt even been in the church that were across the street that speaks to how we are still in a lot of ways inside low here we published about education in the paper last fall, and one of the pieces i handled as a piece about how the history of the state plays forward into our Racial Disparities and school performance. One of the things we found is even though people may live in the communities that are diverse in the geographic communities they dont go to school together. Or the ballfield or across parties or whatnot we go to different churches usually. We could go on and on and on. We may sit together in cubicles at work, but do we have each other over for dinner. That is what i would hope people will bring away from this is that there are examples of where that is happening. We cant continue to have essentially two school systems. One of the great frustrations of the families involved in the shooting is that there was not large policy changes to address the problems even after we ran the series on education you may remember the state legislature wasnt able to pass the reform. I hoped there would be policy changes regarding guns and hate crimes. A number of them would like to see that and so we seem to be a little bit stuck when it comes to making wholesale changes that could have a real effect. I was just sitting here looking around. I got back here in charleston and when i saw the article about you in your book, it is very sad to me what has happened and i cant even talk about it still to this day. Im always looking behind me even after church i hear the door close. Were they invited us to come out tonight . They were the same as you did. We are having an event tomorrow night if any of you want to hear me talk again. I invited a number of them to come because that is when it is put on by the newspaper and a way we can say thank you for their participation. I think your point, why arent we. That is the question that i hear people talking about more. Does thathose that resulted in s that are together more . That is something we struggle with in this country. But that isnt the case in school. Its what they are learning from their parents and their grandparents and their cousins. Another interesting point regarding that is he learned most of his views online. There doesnt seem to be a lot of evidence that he learned about how or at school. If you remember the case, he wasnt sure why the case was causing or generating so much Media Coverage the algorithm produced for him a website called the council of conservative citizens such as a racist website so he went there and started looking around and began his journey as best as people can tell towards becoming a white supremacist. While, what if he had gone out of his house and he knew africanamericans or people of other races, would that have been different . I was just going to say he actually did. Growing up in school, he had a couple of friend people found when this was first breaking i remember one of their mothers saying his mom seemed very nice, she never picked up anything like that. But at the time he was looking at this time he was looking pretty isolated in his bedroom so at that point in time it didnt seem like there was a lot of interaction going on outside between him and people of otherf other races, so i always wonder if he had been engaged with them and had he known actual people, then maybe it would have been different. We will never know of course that he was being fed by websites whose goal is to get you into their thinking and join that mindset, that ideology that was successful to the tragic end in the case. Did you discuss the impact of the appearance in terms of bringing the story giving us Real National attention . Denigrated. I talked about remember president obama came to deliver the eulogy and i did talk about quite a bit and at the end of the book, we included the whole eulogy because it struck me that that was a defining moment of this and one of the women who died in the shooting, her brother i remember standing outside of the church with him the South Carolina<\/a>. I want to thank all of you for coming tonight. Im happy to see you. I want to think barnes and noble for having me here tonight. Its an honor to be in the company of fabulous authors. I see some old friends out there, i see some new friends out there and some people i know who were directly affected by this tragedy. Why dont i tell you about the book, im happy to take questions. Ill read a bit from the book and i want to hear what you have to say and what you would like for me to answer. When we dive right in . This book is about june 17, 2015. This is the beginning of the story. That night was an especially hot night. It was about 8 00 p. M. When a young white man with a bowl haircut parked outside of annual ame church. If you dont live here, this is a Historic Black Church<\/a> in the heart of downtown. It was summertime, the city was filled with tourists. Kids were out of school in the city was starting to quiet a bit for the night when he slipped into a side door and went toward the fellowship hall. There were 12 people getting ready to start their bible study. There were several of the purchased members, most of the churches staff and an 11yearold girl. They sat down and welcomed him, figuring if he was there to hear the word of god, they would welcome him and they did. We now know hims name with dylan and he was a white supremacist. He sat for about an hour with them. Theres a story in mark for about jesus teaching what happens when you pass seeds of faith on two different kinds of terrain. If you put on rocky soil, the seeds wither up and die. If you cast the seeds onto fertile soil, it will grow and flourish. He sat for about an hour and didnt say anything. When they shut their eyes for the closing prayer, he reached into a tactical pouch on his waist and pulled out a gun. He shot the Senior Pastor<\/a> who is sitting right beside him, the state senator and then he proceeded to shoot other, eight other people, mostly middleaged and elderly women as they were, they have these round foldout tables. Three of the people in that room survived. Two were adult women and one was a child. One of the women was felicia sanders. Felicia grabbed her grand daughter and pulled her beneath the table and played dead. She told her to play dead and they did. As her loved ones were shot around her. The other women, ali was about seven and she was also hiding under the table. She watched his boots come toward her until he stopped and asked, if i chopped you get and she said no. He said im not going to, im going to leave you here to tell the story. Then he left. This was about 9 00 p. M. On wednesday night and i was getting ready for bed that night. I had no idea the terror they were experiencing. Until i started to see tweets on my twitter feed. There was a shooting at church downtown, there was a shooting at mother emmanuel. Then it became clear there were multiple people dead. I had been with the paper for a number of years so i was familiar enough that i knew if there were multiple people dead and if this was a stranger that the history was going to be very important. So that night, i began doing research. The first story i wrote was about 1 00 a. M. About how emmanuel was the Oldest Church<\/a> in the south and after the civil war the congregation which was driven to worship underground chose to name emmanuel, which means god with us. So for about four years now, i have covered this tragedy for the newspaper and while writing this book and decided to start that book that night because it was such an unimaginable moment. A big moment in our citys history. But its really only the beginning. So that shooting is the start of the story but i tried to tell a story thats much broader, more personal, more nuanced. Remember it was captured the next morning. Then there was a bond hearing. Four of the victims family members spoke and they all spoke words of forgiveness and christian mercy and love and grace and it was a beautiful moment. It was heard all around the country, around the world really. The next day, someone found the shooters website. So we learned all about his racist views, pictures of him holding the Confederate Flag<\/a> up as im sure many of you have seen. I was obviously disturbing moment. These two storylines came to the tragedy, forgiveness on one hand and forgiveness racist on the other side. It was a lot more complicated. As i got to know some of the family members and survivors, i realized what they were dealing with was a lot more complicated. Thats what i wanted to get across in this book. These tragedies are kind of like throwing a rock into a pond, what happens . You see at impact and then these rings radiate across the surface of the water that can even cover the entire surface of the water. I started to think about this many times, when i was talking with the survivors and families, they were not only dealing with grief and trauma also they were living under this new unbelievably intense spotlight. I remember felicia said one day, telling me that a woman at church said Something Like<\/a> well, youre a movie star now, or you are like a movie star now. It bothered her because she definitely didnt want to be a movie star, especially on the back of a tragedy. Felicia wanted to have her son back and her cousin back and all of them back. She wanted her old life back where she was a Church Volunteer<\/a> in her mother and a grandmother and a hairdresser. Instead, there were newspaper articles, documentaries, magazine stories, speaking engagements. It felt like everything was different. I realized when i was talking with police, they were responding to an active shooter call and did not know if they would come out alive, they didnt know what they would see but they went in anyway. I remember talking to one of them, he was describing holding one of their hands as the young man died, stayed with bodies all night long. They cleared out the building so they could investigate. He refused to leave. I wondered how did that not change his life . How did it not change his colleagues life and all of the people around him . I realized this while i was talking to the medical staff a few blocks away in the trauma bay, when they got the call, they sent out a number of beds and had teams ready to go to save the people shot. One of them was brought in his wounds were too devastating. They were not able to save him despite tremendous effort. They waited and waited and nobody else came in because everybody else who had been shot, died there. So i thought, how do those medical workers go on and not remember this every time they deal with another trauma . How do they not think differently about their jobs . I thought about nikki haley, she described hearing the updates all night long, each one worse than the last. Then the next morning waking up her children and telling them what happened before she came to charleston and addressed the state. So i thought, how does it not affect their children the next time they go to church . I remember talking with the Police Lieutenant<\/a>. There was a Police Lieutenant<\/a> who went and dug through the trash from the crime scene to get felicias bible back because it meant that much to felicia to have it again. How does it not change that lieutenants life for her life . I remember speaking with the jurors. They sat through a week long trial that was very grueling. They got to see crime scene photos. They will not ever forget those photos and neither will i or anybody else was there in that courtroom. This seemed to go on and on and on across that are dealing with these kind of tragedies in the aftermath. So, what city, what house of worship or church will be next. Thats what i started thinking about. But also if you look back at history this shooting in particular reminds me of an event about 55 years ago now at 16th Street Baptist Church<\/a> in alabama and if you remember this was a tragedy in which members planted a bomb outside of the church. It was a sunday, and it was a special sunday because in the life of the church that they, the children would play a special role in the service and a member of little girls were getting ready in the rest room and when the bomb exploded, four of them were killed in. Three of the little girls families held a joint funeral and he spoke at the funeral and said we also, they also want us to be concerned not only with who murdered them but with the systems and way of life into the philosophy which produced. So, i know for a fact the families involved want the same for their loved ones, and get they have seen the country continue to struggle with racism and hate crimes, theyve continued to see White Supremacists<\/a> target other houses of worship. Not that long ago in pittsburgh we had a shooting at the synagogue there and at another synagogue out in california. And really as far as new zeala zealand. But i can tell you there have been changes its just they are more personal kind of changes. For instance, one thing youll read about in the book is the survivors left the church and she went essentially to the predominantly white church almost right next door but because it remained such a segregated hour of the week she had never even been inside the church. She grew up just blocks away but now her family goes to the church. The other survivor the tree of life shootings last fall in october, and i think it was around january she went into the synagogue and wanted to offer comfort to people and also explained to them what they could expect and explain what she had been through. It came down to emmanuelle on Martin Luther<\/a> king weekend to worship with they got together and started holding a book study which sometimes had people who otherwise may never come into contact with one another. They get together. I hope youll read about a you a little bit more in this book. The end result could be i hope and we could all hope there might be a reunion of people that comes out of something so terrible but we also know they wanted to reinstitute segregation. So these kind of things that bring us together can have the opposite effect of what he wanted. And that could turn out to be very beautiful. Let me say one other thing. This book has my name on it but its the result of a partnership between the posting career and Saint Martins<\/a> press in new york they were involved in covering the tragedy, the reporters, photographers, the digital crew, lots of people that do great work and i drew on their work. One of the things we want to do is take the proceeds from the book and begin an Internship Program<\/a> for journalism students of color to come and learn from us. I have to brag about the newspaper for a minute because im very proud of the work we do. The posting career has been the winner or the finalist for the Pulitzer Prize<\/a> more times in the past five years than most of the major metropolitan newspapers in the country. And you know the newspapers across america are making deep cuts in their newsrooms. But we are lucky at the boston career theyve been investing in the newsroom, hiring reporters, trying to broaden the reach is strong journalism can continue to exist. So my hope is that students will come join us for the summer and then stay with us when they graduate so that this could be one more way that something good can come out of a terrible tragedy. So, ive opened the door to questions. I dont want to go on and on and not answer what you would like to know. If i could have one take away i hope that ca it can tell you a e complete story of the story sinca story sincehow many of yot of you probably know the basics of this unless [inaudible] if you have a question can you ask it in the microphone because they are recording and they would like to be able to hear you. One of the stunning things you found iwefound in reporting the. I think the most stunning thing for me is the fact that people were not hurting because of the shooting but because of him a lot of other things that were happening. There was fallout between the survivors and family members in the church. There i was division in one of e families if you imagine throwing a boulder into your family like this, every positive relationship is magnified by a million times in every relationship is magnified by a million times. People dont respond to trauma saying, but the one thing i found pretty universal among the families that i got to know well enough to know this was that everything was tightened, every emotion was heightened so there were divisions within the families. As i said there were divisions between the families and the church, so they are heard and it was more complicated than i realized at the beginning of this. I know a lot of people since loving things and pictures and at one time, they were going to do a museum and show things. Is that still going on kind of like the africanamerican music and they are building a possible place where are they going to do their own thing . They are working with a company to build a memorial outside of the church which will provide a place where people can go to be in the presence of the church, pray and remember the people who died. There is a story the church has put all that stuff in safekeeping and they are attempting to archive and catalog it. So all that stuff is safe and sound, and it will be displayed in some fashion and they are trying to figure that out now. Reading your book since ive been sitting here and from the beginning use of your children went to School Across<\/a> from the church and he went to the church. Have you ever been in emmanuelle before then . I had not been inside before that. That is a good question. And you know, interestingly i thought back about that question and one of our colleagues died and iran are to seeing his funeral from the outside so when i thought why havent i been, i had interviewed the reverend before, but it was over the telephone. And so, i thought to your point, why is that. I had been in many churches but why havent i been inside emanuel ax part of it is story selection. Thats what i mean by our staff has to do a better job before reflecting the community that we serve and part of the reason for that is because everybody brings to the table and our newsroom different ideas and of those ideas sometimes are based on the news and dictated by whats happening. The. Really the only thing we could think it think of i have had the church that day but he wasnt physically there. That is the kind of input that would be useful for us to have. I was born and raised in the south. For this to happen is tragic and i thought where do all these people come from now. Its sad that the people hadnt even been in the church that were across the street that speaks to how we are still in a lot of ways inside low here we published about education in the paper last fall, and one of the pieces i handled as a piece about how the history of the state plays forward into our Racial Disparities<\/a> and school performance. One of the things we found is even though people may live in the communities that are diverse in the geographic communities they dont go to school together. Or the ballfield or across parties or whatnot we go to different churches usually. We could go on and on and on. We may sit together in cubicles at work, but do we have each other over for dinner. That is what i would hope people will bring away from this is that there are examples of where that is happening. We cant continue to have essentially two school systems. One of the great frustrations of the families involved in the shooting is that there was not large policy changes to address the problems even after we ran the series on education you may remember the state legislature wasnt able to pass the reform. I hoped there would be policy changes regarding guns and hate crimes. A number of them would like to see that and so we seem to be a little bit stuck when it comes to making wholesale changes that could have a real effect. I was just sitting here looking around. I got back here in charleston and when i saw the article about you in your book, it is very sad to me what has happened and i cant even talk about it still to this day. Im always looking behind me even after church i hear the door close. Were they invited us to come out tonight . They were the same as you did. We are having an event tomorrow night if any of you want to hear me talk again. I invited a number of them to come because that is when it is put on by the newspaper and a way we can say thank you for their participation. I think your point, why arent we. That is the question that i hear people talking about more. Does thathose that resulted in s that are together more . That is something we struggle with in this country. But that isnt the case in school. Its what they are learning from their parents and their grandparents and their cousins. Another interesting point regarding that is he learned most of his views online. There doesnt seem to be a lot of evidence that he learned about how or at school. If you remember the case, he wasnt sure why the case was causing or generating so much Media Coverage<\/a> the algorithm produced for him a website called the council of conservative citizens such as a racist website so he went there and started looking around and began his journey as best as people can tell towards becoming a white supremacist. While, what if he had gone out of his house and he knew africanamericans or people of other races, would that have been different . I was just going to say he actually did. Growing up in school, he had a couple of friend people found when this was first breaking i remember one of their mothers saying his mom seemed very nice, she never picked up anything like that. But at the time he was looking at this time he was looking pretty isolated in his bedroom so at that point in time it didnt seem like there was a lot of interaction going on outside between him and people of otherf other races, so i always wonder if he had been engaged with them and had he known actual people, then maybe it would have been different. We will never know of course that he was being fed by websites whose goal is to get you into their thinking and join that mindset, that ideology that was successful to the tragic end in the case. Did you discuss the impact of the appearance in terms of bringing the story giving us Real National<\/a> attention . Denigrated. I talked about remember president obama came to deliver the eulogy and i did talk about quite a bit and at the end of the book, we included the whole eulogy because it struck me that that was a defining moment of this and one of the women who died in the shooting, her brother i remember standing outside of the church with him the First Anniversary<\/a> bible study he was standing outside the church and all of a sudden this magnificent rainbow appeared. If you were here in town you will remember this rainbow appeared and then another rainbow. It was a double rainbow and from where we were standing, it went right over the steeple of the church. It was amazing. And he said Something Like<\/a> thats god, and his wife set to the second one thats faith, and it was a special moment. They began talking with me and mentioned that the eulogy was for their generation in their early 30s maybe even at the time the 20s cost of their generation, the eulogy was like what Martin Luther<\/a> kings i have a dream speech was for the older generation of africanamericans. Africanamericans. It meant that much. It was that speaking to hope in what is terrible and hopeless and so i thought including the speech would be special because people could read the whole text and try to imagine in the throes of this put that message felt like at the funeral. So, yes, to answer the question i did talk a fair amount about it. And also a little bit of behind the scenes with president obama thinking about singing because he had debated while he was flying in with his wife debated whether to saying and she said if the moment feels right. When i watch the tape after hearing that i can see him up there for almost ten seconds he stood there. You could see the wheels turning. Should i do it, tha then he did. He started singing, and it became i feel like from my prospective that that was a defining moment and really a special one in terms of kind of bringing us out of that horrible morass of the funeral and having a greater message to move forward with. Jennifer, you mentioned how you were wondering how this has changed the Police Officers<\/a> and the people in the er and things like that. How has it changed you . In a lot of ways. But as a human being i would say it makes me think your point a lot more about my security when i go places where i might not have before. Thats not only from this tragedy of course, but from hearing tragedy after tragedy. I learned a lot about the cities history that i didnt know. When i was retracing the survivors steps that night from emmanuelle they went across the street so as they were walking if you are familiar with that path, they would have gone along side of Marion Square<\/a> from the street named calhoun test the monument if you are not familiar he is the former Vice President<\/a> , one of the defenders of slavery in america. Would have walked past the calhoun statute and have gone to this needs which was originally an arsenal bill after the uprising was discovered to keep watch over the city which at time was mostly populated by african residents to make sure that nothing the frontend of the population. And that building then went on to become with you all know the cadets fired the first shots, so just tracing the path alone, all of these Little Pockets<\/a> of history. And as i went around the city, and another example in hampden park. So in the park after wade hampton those are the things i realized i never thought about it was that hampden park. So now i feel like i have begun to be more aware of the history of the city. You realize the tip of the iceberg from all the stuff you didnt know and so in order to understand where this thinking comes from let me say im not from South Carolina<\/a>, i didnt take the history of the class. Its in the curriculum. I suspect its not adequate. I did a story about the case which a lot of you may know was one of the five cases of came together to become brown v. Board of education. I didnt know right here in South Carolina<\/a> was one of the pivotal cases in desegregating the schools. So, that is just the tip of the iceberg because i dont know what i dont know so i think that its incumbent on all of us to learn more about history because everywhere you go in charleston there are stories. That is a big take away for me. Everywhere there are these stories mostly stuffed away into the closet corner of history not remembered. So, how do we embrace that his he and make sure that we are educated . One other thing i will mention i learned is that everybody deals with this differently. I was talking with some people at the tree of life at the synagogue and they are having some similar issues. We are all human beings and we all have complicated dynamics. It was interesting for me to see that unfold, and i hope you find it as interesting as i did that part of what i wanted to talk about was how much more complicated that journey was. I learned a lot and theres a lot more to learn. [inaudible] in 1998. I just wondered how you came up with the title. We wen we went round and round because we originally wanted to call it amazing grace. Part of it was practically speaking there were other titles. If you searched it you would have to find out which one is what. And i didnt want that to sound like it was a christian book. This is not a book designed to teach you about christianity or to convince you to become a christian. This is a journalistic book about what happened here and about the people and christianity is an important part of the story. But i didnt want it to sound like if you are just looking at it that its a religious book. We went around and around, and eventually we knew we just wanted to stick with something. So god will lead us home is a line from the him that obama mentioned in the eulogy. So that is where we decided to go. Last spring and this spring they open up the different churches have you attended one of those . I went to that at the Second Presbyterian Church<\/a> and if its the one im remembering because there are a lot of similar event there was a large group i think it was from st. James presbyterian church, but its one example i think one is just going into places that seem unfamiliar to us. Going to places we just normally wouldnt go because we are in the site was. The pastor at mount zion, i remember him doing a sermon at the Second Presbyterian Church<\/a> is for those of you that dont know predominantly a white church in downtown Martin Luther<\/a> king weekend or thereabouts and it was able from his church in the second presbyterian and others coming together to worship together and that is the kind of thing i think there are changes happening in quieter ways that were not seen as a larger conversation where people discuss race more frankly or where there is policy changes that could help. There is the Justice Ministry<\/a> which has been going on for five or six or seven years or maybe ten years. There are many people who postulate that the fact that had been already established and was functional and integrated as part of the reason charleston didnt blow up. That is one example where you have people coming together to find Common Concerns<\/a> in the community and try into achieve some results or force some changes. Thats the kind of thing we have seen. Its interesting most of what we have seen has come from the churches. Thereve been other things if you remember the city Council Passed<\/a> the apology remember it was on behalf of the city for the institution of slavery. But that vote was still pretty narrow if you youve rememberei think that it was 52007. So something could have been denying. In the beginning it is very interesting and have you had a table group with complex generally speaking, we dont show people the work before it is published. Some of the immediate family members when i had the advanced copies i shared it with them and i did send a copy of the advanced reader they are further out from the tragedy and ha hava posture in place that had stability for a few years. So they are feeling a little bit more on their footing because for so long they struggled with so many visitors and would be inundated with visitors. That isnt something that we normally do, but im happy to do that. Thank you. If you have any other questions to think of. Do we pay first and then bring it back for you to sign . I will try to get it signed and then pay for it. I will speak for them since they are not here. [laughter] excellence. But i am going to read to you, after the shooting, if you remember this is a woman who hid beneath the table with her granddaughter and she really struggled with the loss of her son and the trauma of what happened and was struggling with feeling like the minister of the church hadnt come to her home to pray with her. She had a lot of spiritual questions as you can imagine, not the least of which was why he had this happened, and what was gods purpose in this, so that is kind of where we come in here. After the shooting, the Corner Office<\/a> staff had taken care to return salvageable items found on the victims body and in the fellowship hall. One woman had found and cleaned her purse. She was grateful for the womans efforts, but what she really wanted back with her bible. You dont want it, the woman had cautioned. Yes, i do. We dont think you do. You can keep everything, she said, i want my bible. However, it had been tossed in the trash, throwing away with other thing that were damaged to the victims families. When the Police Lieutenant<\/a> caught wind of the conversation, she didnt dismiss the request as impossible. A diverted catholic, she understood what it meant to a grieving mother and she also had been working with the national fbi Rapid Response<\/a> team that flew in to help local Police Agencies<\/a> and victim advocates handled the non casualty events. The members of the tragedies of places but sandy hook elementary and broad critical Lessons Learned<\/a> including many of the devastated parents had wanted their childrens personal affects of backpacks and drawings no matter how damaged. The fbi team also discovered a Texas Company<\/a> that could salvage even the most bloodsoaked items. Five days after the shooting, antonio called a counterpart and soon drove to the first of two storage buildings that house fire hazards of the cleaning crews have thrown away. There, they hold off several plastic bin that contained the life and death of nine people. In gloved hands, he rummaged through papers that clung to a dark bedsheet. A bullet had pierced the pages. She opened the cover and the private part two of the pages. Stuck between them a little torn off piece of what might have been a receipt for a name on it. Felicia sanders. Antonio had carefully wrapped it up and send it to the company in texas. Two weeks later a box appeared in the mail. Antonio found the winding road to her home and knocked on the front door. She greeted her. Though her eyes were followed with grief, she managed to smile. They sensed the effort that it took to greet the people needing to talk about the investigation, Community Members<\/a> who suddenly wanted to know her and the large circles of family and friends who stopped by to visit. She decided to make it quick. As they walked inside, he held out the box. She took it from her and opened it gently tugging aside the tissue paper. Then the basic instructions before leaving earth. She opened up the front cover. A pink shoe now tempted the paper inside. A tear barely visible now marked where the bullet had pierced the pages. Despite the bloodshed, the words were still in clear black and bold letters. God was still with her. So, she developed this bible to the sentencing hearing and she held it up and took the pages and said something to the affect i have forgiven you but nobody can help you until you help yourself and i thought that it was interesting she brought it with her as if to show defiance no matter what had happened to it was still hers and i thought that it was a special moment in the fact that the Police Lieutenant<\/a> would do that. I cant imagine going to the cleaning crews that had just gotten rid of what they thought people wouldnt want and they were trying to help people do not have to come back and see it. Little did they know that it could be salvaged. I hope you will read more about her journey and all of the journeys. Its a tragic story but in the end it is one of the people that survived in more than just the physical sense. So thank you and im happy to sign your copies or answer any other questions. [applause] we wanted to show some programs from the book tv archives on the subject. Next, the republican congressman Steve Scalise<\/a> of louisiana describes being wounded in the 2017 shooting at a practice for the annual congress of all baseball game in virginia","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"archive.org","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","width":"800","height":"600","url":"\/\/ia801003.us.archive.org\/1\/items\/CSPAN2_20190808_004600_Jennifer_Hawes_Grace_Will_Lead_Us_Home\/CSPAN2_20190808_004600_Jennifer_Hawes_Grace_Will_Lead_Us_Home.thumbs\/CSPAN2_20190808_004600_Jennifer_Hawes_Grace_Will_Lead_Us_Home_000001.jpg"}},"autauthor":{"@type":"Organization"},"author":{"sameAs":"archive.org","name":"archive.org"}}],"coverageEndTime":"20240716T12:35:10+00:00"}