See some old friends out there, i see some new friends out there, i see some people i know were directly affected by this tragedy, so im thrilled to have all of you here. I think what might be useful is why dont i tell you a little bit about the book. Im happy to take your questions, sign copies if youd like, read a little bit from the book, and i mostly really want to hear what you have to say and what youd like me to answer. So lets just dive right in. This book is, of course, about june 17, 2015, this was the beginning of the story. That night, as many of you will remember if you were here, it was an especially hot night. It was 8 00 at night when a young white man with a bowl haircut parked outside emmanuel ame church. And if you dont know emmanuel, if you dont live here, this is an Historic Black Church in the heart of downtown charleston. So he parked outside about 8 00 at night. It was summertime, the city was filled with tourists, the kids were out of school, and the city was starting to quiet a bit for the night when he slipped into a side door, and he went toward the churchs Fellowship Hall. And in the Fellowship Hall were 12 people who were getting ready to start their bible study. There were several of the churchs most devoted members, most of the churchs ministerial staff and an 111yearold girl. 11yearold girl. So they sat down and they welcomed him figuring that if he was there to hear the word of god, then they would welcome him, and they did. Of course, we now know that his name was dylann roof and that he was an avowed white supremacist. So he sat with them the for about an hour as they discussed the parable of the sower. The parable of the sower is a story in mark four about jesus teaching what happens when you cast seeds of faith onto different kinds of terrain. If you cast onto rocky soil, the seeds will wither up and die, right . If you cast those seeds onto fertile soil, they will grow and nourish. Now, he sat with them for about an hour and didnt say anything. And when they shut their eyes for their closing prayer, he reached into a tactical pouch around his waist. It looked like a fanny pack, and pulled out a gun. He shot the chumps senior pass churchs Senior Pastor who was sitting beside him first, the state senator, and then he proceeded to shoot eight other people, mostly middleaged and elderly women as they were diving beneath these they had these round foldout tables you might be familiar with. You might use at a picnic or in a Fellowship Hall. And three of the people in that room survived. Two of them were adult women and one was the child. So i one of those women was Felicia Sanders. Felicia grabbed her granddaughter, the child, and she pulled her beneath a table and played dead, clutched her very tightly to her chest and told her to play dead, which they did, as her loved ones were shot around her. The other woman in the room was a woman named polly shepard. Polly was about 70 years old, and she also was hiding beneath a table. And polly was praying out loud. As she watched his boots come toward her until he stopped and he asked, have i shot you yet, and she says, no. And he said, well, im not going to, im going to leave you here to tell the story. And then he left. Now, this was about 9 00 at night on a wednesday night. I was, like many people in this room probably, i was getting ready for bed. I had no idea the terror that they were experiencing until i started to see tweets come across my twitter feed from the my colleagues. And it was this was a shooting at a church downtown, there was a shooting at mother emmanuel, it was inside mother emmanuel, and then it became clear there were multiple people dead. Now, i had been the religion writer at the paper for a number of years, so i was familiar enough with emmanuel that the i knew if there were multiple people dead and if this was a stranger, that that history was going to be very important. So that night i began doing research, and the first story that i wrote about this tragedy was late that night about 1 00 in the morning or so, and it was about how emmanuel is the oldest ame church in the south and how after the civil war in 1865 the congregation which had been driven to worship underground chose for themselves the name emmanuel which means in the gospel of matthew, it says that it means god with us. So since then for about four years now, i have covered this tragedy both for the newspaper and also while writing this book with assistant Martins Press st. Martins press and decided to start the book with that night i just told you about because it was just such an unimaginable moment and such a big moment in our citys history. But its really only the beginning. So that shooting, its the start of the story, but i really, ive tried to tell a story thats much broader, much more personal, much more nuanced. Youll remember that dylann roof was captured the next morning, and then the following morning, following day there was a bond hearing. And at his bond hearing, four of the victims family members spoke, and they all spoke words of forgiveness and christian a mercy and love and grace. And it was just an absolutely beautiful moment. It was heard all around the country, all around the world really. Finish and then the next day someone found the shooters web site, and so we learned all about his racist views, we saw those pictures that im sure many of you have seen of him holding the Confederate Flag up, and that was the obviously very disturbing. What these two really poe hard storylines came polar storylines came to define this tragedy; forgiveness on the one hand and racism on the other. What i saw on the ground if charleston was a story that was really a lot more complicated. As i got to know some of the family members and the survivors, i realized that what they were dealing with was really a hot more complicated a lot more complicated, and thats what i wanted to get across in this book. You know, ive come to think of these tragedies as being kind of like if you think of throwing a rock into a pond, and some of you may have heard me say this before, but i think its a useful analogy. If you throw a rock into a pond, what happens . You see a splash at the point of impact, and then you see these rings radiate out across the surface of the water, and it even covers the entire water. So i started to think about this many times really, but when i was talking with some of the survivors and the family members, i realized they were not only dealing with the tremendous grief and trauma, but they also were living under this new unbelievably intense spotlight. I remember Felicia Sanders, for instance, one day telling me that a woman at church had said Something Like, well, youre a movie star now, or youre like a movie star now. And it bothered her because she certainly didnt want to be a movie e star, and she definitely didnt want to be a movie star on the back of this tragedy. I believe it was right after she and polly had spoken at the Democratic National convention to an enormous audience. But, you know, felicia, she didnt want to be a movie star. She wanted to have her son back and her aunt back and her cousin back and all of them back. She wanted her old life back where she was just a regular old Church Volunteer and a mother and a grandmother and a hair dresser. So instead the, though, there were like newspaper articles, documentaries, tv shows, magazine stories, fundraisers, honors, speaking engagements, and it felt like everything about their lives was different. And i realized this when i was talking with some of the Police Officers who went into the Fellowship Hall that night, they were responding to an active shooter call, and they did not know if they would come out alive. They didnt know if they they didnt know what they would see. But they went in anyway. And one of them, i remember talking to, he was describing holding a young mans hand who died and staying with the bodies all night long because there was a bomb scare, if you remember, and it cleared out the building so they could investigate. He refused to leave. He stayed with them all night long. I always wondered how did that not change his life . How did that not change his wifes life, his colleagues life and all of the people around him . And i realized this while i was talking to some of the medical staff at musc a few blocks away in the trauma bay. When they got the call, they set out a number of beds and had teams ready to go to try to save the people who had been shot. One of the men was brought in, but his wounds were too devastating, they were not able to save him despite tremendous effort. And then those beds sat empty all night long, and they waited and they waited, and nobody else came in because everybody else who had been shot in the Fellowship Hall died there. So i thought, well, 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 . Or i thought about, for instance, you remember thengovernor nikki haley, she described for me hearing these updates all night long, each one worse than the last k and then early the next morning going in and if waking up her two children to tell them what had happened. Before she came to charleston and addressed the state. And if you remember, she went to all nine of the funerals. So i started thinking, well, how does that not affect her children the next time they go to church or how does that not affect her and the people all around her for the rest of her life . I remember talking with a Police Lieutenant, and i think ill read, if we have time, a passage that regards this moment when there was a Police Lieutenant who went and dug through the bloodied trash through the crime scene to get Felicia Sanders her bible back because it meant that much to felicia to have it again. How does that not change that Police Lieutenants life, the rest of her life . Or i remember speaking with the jurors. The jurors committed themselves to handing out justice in this case, but that meant sitting through the weekslong trial that was very grueling, and they got to see the crime scene photos. Now, im hear to tell you, they will not ever forget those crime scene photos, and neither will i, and neither will anybody else who was there in that courtroom. So these rings seemed to go on and on and on across the city and across all of these peoples lives, and thats what i wanted to write this book about. Because its not just charleston. We heard about this just, what, friday in virginia beach. Pittsburgh, parkland, you can go on and on and on, cities across america that are dealing with these kinds of tragedies and the aftermath of those. So what city, what house of worship or what church will be next, thats what i started thinking about. But then also if you look back in history, this shooting in particular reminds me of an event about 55 years ago now at 16th Street Baptist Church in alabama. As youll remember, this was a tragedy in which members of the kkk planted a bomb outside the church. It was a sunday, and it was a special sunday because in the life of the church that day, the children would play a very special role in the service. And a number of little girls were getting ready in the restroom when the bomb exploded. Four of them were killed. Three of those little girls families held a joint funeral, and Martin Luther king spoke at that funeral, and he said the little girls were martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity. He said we also, however im sorry, he said the little girls would want us to be concerned not only with who murdered them, but with the systems and the way of life and the philosophies which produced the murderer. So i know for a fact that the families involved in the emmanuel shooting want the same for their loved ones, and yet they have seen the country continue to grapple with racism, with hate crimes. Theyve continued to see White Supremacists target other houses of worship. Not that long ago in pittsburgh we had the tree of life shooting, of course, the synagogue there and then at another synagogue out in california. And really as far as new zealand, it reaches. But i can tell you there have been changes. Its just they are more personal kinds of changes, more intimate ones, more interpersonal ones. For instance, Felicia Sanders left emmanuel. One thing youll read about in this book is that the survivors left the church. Felicia sanders went, essentially, to a predominantly white church almost right next door. But because sunday remains a segregated hour of the week, shes never been inside the church. She grew up just blocks away, but now her family goes to this church. And recently polly shepard, the other survivor, so the tree of life shooting in pittsburgh was last fall in october, and i think it was around january she went out to the synagogue, and she wanted to offer comfort to people there, she wanted to also explain to them what they could expect next and share some wisdom that shed learned from what she had been through. And a group from tree of life came down to emmanuel on Martin Luther king weekend and worshiped with them there. Polly went to mount zion ame, and mount zion sits right next door to grace episcopal church, very Historic White Church in town. So they got together and started holding a book study which draws sometimes 60, 100 people or more, and they get together, people who otherwise may never come into contact with one another, they get together and they discuss books and essays that have to do with race. This book has my name on it, but in fact, the result of a partnership between the prayer and st. Martin press in new york. Many, many people in the news room involved in tragedy, photographers, designers, editors, lots and lots of people who did great work and i drew on their work for this book, but our news room is like many news rooms across america, one of the things that we want to do is take the proceeds from the book and begin a Summer Internship Program for journalism of kids of color, im very proud of the work that we do. The boston carrier has been winner more times in the past 5 years than most of the major metropolitan newspapers in the country. You knee the newspapers across america are making deep cuts in their news room, burr we are lucky, investing in the news room, hiring reporters, trying to broaden our reach so that strong journalism can continue to exist, so my hope is that students will come join us for the summer and then will stay with us when they graduate so that then could be one more way that something good can come out of a terrible tragedy, so with that, i will open the doors to questions. I would like to answer what you would like to know so i could have one take away from you is that i hope this book will tell you a more complete story of a stories how many of you live here . You know the basics, but thank you, i want to hear what you have to ask, what i can answer, if you have a question, can you ask it in the microphone because their theyre recording it and they would like to be able to hear you. What was one of the most stunning things that you found in reporting the story . Gosh, that was good question, i think the most stunning for me is that people werent only hurting because of the shooting but they were hurting because of a lot of other things that was happening, fallout between survivors and the family members and the church, there was Division Within many of the families, if you imagine throwing a bolder into your family like this right now, every positive relationship is magnified by a million tons and every negative relationship is magnified by a approximately tons. People dont respond to trauma the same. The one thing that i found pretty universal among the families that i got to know well enough to know this was that everything was heightened, the emotion was heightened, divisions within the families, there was as i said division between church and their hurt was more complicated than i realized at the beginning of this, yeah. I know a lot of people sent loving things, pictures, we sent a lot of quilts and at one time they were going to do a museum and show things and all, is that still going on and is it kind of like the africanamerican museum they are building a possible place or are they going to do their own thing . So the church is working with a company to build a memorial outside of the church which will provide a place for people can go and in the presence of the church, pray and remember the people who died. The historian of the church has has put all the stuff in safekeeping and theyre keep to go archiving it and catalog it and figuring out what to display, it will be displayed in some fashion, they are trying to figure that out now. Jennifer, from reading your books since ive been sitting here and from the beginning you said your children went to School Across from the church and you worked across from the church, had you ever been mother man yell before before now . I had not been inside before that . Do you know why . Thats a really good question, interestingly i thought back of the question and of the colleagues and i remember seeing the funeral from the outed, so when i went back and thought why havent i been to emmanuel, i had interviewed reverend before but it was over the telephone and so i thought, to your point why is that . I was a religion writer at the time and i had been to many black churches in town but why i hadnt been inside of emmanuel, part of it was story slek, thats what i mean by our staff needs to do a better job of reflecting the community that we serve, part of the reason for that is because everybody has different ideas and their ideas are sometimes based on news and dictated whats happening. Thats the piece where we need to make sure that we have people from different racial backgrounds but also different socioeconomic backgrounds, different areas of the country, we have people in news room that are from South Carolina, theres a lot of us who arent, we all bring different perspectives, we all bring different ideas, so i dont really know the answer