Mother Emanuel AME Church to unveil memorial honoring nine victims of 2015 racist attack

The memorial will be open to the public beginning on November 14, but the memories of the June 2015 tragedy remain within the community.

The nine men and women who were gunned down by a white supremacist at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, are set to be remembered with a stone memorial.

Stationed right next to the church, the 6,000-square-foot memorial in honor of the Emanuel Nine has a fountain with a cross through it. The names of the nine victims: Cynthia Graham Hurd, Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Ethel Lee Lance, Susie Jackson, Tywanza Sanders, Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Myra Thompson, Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton and Rev. Daniel Lee Simmons Sr., are etched around the outside of the memorial with giant, marble fellowship benches that flank the fountain on each side.

From afar, the benches appear like angels’ wings.

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The memorial brought Rev. Sharon Risher, Lance’s daughter, to tears.

“I want people to understand that even in their deaths, they will make an impact on the world,” Risher, daughter of Lance, told TODAY. “And when you come to see this memorial, you will see them as people, to really understand that we have a long way to go in dealing with racism and all the other -isms that came out of that, that they would feel love, that they would feel that these people are in heaven.”

On June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof entered Mother Emanuel AME and prayed with a gathered group for bible study. Then, Roof pulled out a gun and opened fire, killing nine men and women in what was later described as an “act of hate.” A federal grand jury found him guilty of murder and he was sentenced to death. He currently sits on federal death row.

The memorial, which cost $20 million to create, was funded primarily by donations, and a garden is set to be planted on the right side of Mother Emanuel, which has stood for more than 200 years.

“[We wanted people] to read the names and to remember. But then we also wanted to provide some action to be the catalyst for some change,” Deona Smith, the executive director of the Emanuel Nine Memorial, told WCSC 5. “So for you to sit here and reflect, maybe have a little moment of reconciliation with some of your own thoughts, and it should be an opportunity for you to come in and hopefully leave different.”

A public ceremony for the memorial will take place Saturday, November 14 at 9 a.m. and is open to the public. In prior years, the Emanuel Nine have been remembered through commemorative events at the church and were the subject of a 2019 documentary, “Emanuel.”