South Carolina has a long, violent, and racist history, effectively setting a morbid backdrop for the events that unfolded on June 17, 2015. The Charleston shooting occurred in a church named the Emanuel African Methodist Episocopal Church (A.M.E.) The church had become somewhat of a hub for social justice and political activism. Denmark Vesey was one of the founders of the church and used it as a homebase for what the National Park Service describes as, “an enslaved insurrection” against slave-owners and both city and state officials. Douglas R. Egerton continues the story by describing how the city eventually destroyed the church, only for it to be rebuilt by Vesey’s son Robert. Then, when an earthquake struck Charleston in the 1880s, members of the church helped to rebuild and repair damages to it (“Before Charleston’s Shooting, a Long History of Attacks”). 

In more recent times, the church community...

After the landmark case, Brown v Board of Education, the Little Rock school board agreed to desegregate their school system. Like most of the population at the time, the community of Little Rock fought back against the idea. Despite the backlash, the plan continued. In September of 1957, nine African American students were the first to enter the previously all-white Little Rock Central High School. Prior to their first day of school, Governor Orval Faubus ordered the National Guard to block the nine students from entering the building, saying it was for their own safety. The students were met with the National Guard and an aggressive mob blocking the entrance to the school when they arrived. Since this went against the ruling of Brown v Board of Education, about 16 days later a federal judge ordered the...