Charleston Church Massacre (2015)

Wed Jun 17, 2015

Image

Image: A photo showing the nine people killed in the Charleston Church Massacre: Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Ethel Lance, Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Rev. Daniel Simmons, Cynthia Hurd, Myra Thompson, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Susan Jackson, and Tywanza Sanders

On this day in 2015, the Charleston Church Massacre took place in Charleston, South Carolina when a white supremacist entered Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and shot twelve people, killing nine (shown). The shooter targeted the church in part due to its stature; Emanuel AME is one of the oldest black churches in the United States and has long been a center for organizing events for civil rights campaigns.

In 2016, he was convicted of 33 federal hate crime and murder charges and later sentenced to death. The Charleston massacre was tied with a 1991 attack at a Buddhist temple in Waddell, Arizona for the deadliest mass shooting at a U.S. place of worship.

Since then, however, two deadlier shootings have occurred at places of worship: the Sutherland Springs church shooting in 2017 and the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018.