Post by Admin on Jun 21, 2015 14:28:00 GMT
"Mother" Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church
www.emanuelamechurch.org/revpinckney.php
In 1787, Richard Allen and others of African descent withdrew from St. George's Methodist Church in Philadelphia because of unkind treatment and restrictions placed upon the worshispers of African descent. After Allen left St. George's Methodist Church, he and his followers purchased a blacksmith shop for thirty-five dollars. From the blacksmith shop they worshipped and helped the sick and the poor. The blacksmith shop was converted into a church. They called the new church Bethel.
In 1816 Allen called together sixteen representatives from Bethel African Church in Philadelphia and African churches in Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey to meet in Philadelphia. The movement blossomed and the African Methodist Episcopal Chucrh was organized. Richard Allen was the first bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
The AME Church has never strayed from the course charted by Richard Allen. The church is wedded to the spiritual doctrine of "God our Father, Christ our Redeemer, Man our Brother".
The history of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church reflects the development of religious institutions for African Americans in Charleston. Dating back to the fall of 1787 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Richard Allen founded the Free African Society, adhering to the Doctrines of Methodism established by John Wesley. In 1816, black members of Charleston's Methodist Episcopal church withdrew over disputed burial ground, and under the leadership of Morris Brown. The Rev. Morris Brown organized a church of persons of color and sought to have it affiliated with Allen's church. Three churches arose under the Free African Society and were named the "Bethel Circuit". One of the Circuit churches was located in the suburbs of Ansonborough, Hampstead, and Cow Alley, now known as Philadelphia Alley in the French Quarters of Charleston. Emanuel's congregation grew out of the Hampstead Church, located at Reid and Hanover Streets.
In 1822 the church was investigated for its involvement with a planned slave revolt. Denmark Vesey, one of the church's founders, organized a major slave uprising in Charleston. Vesey was raised in slavery in the Virgin Islands among newly imported Africans. He was the personal servant of slavetrader Captain Joseph Vesey, who settled in Charleston in 1783. Beginning in December 1821, Vesey began to organize a slave rebellion, but authorities were informed of the plot before it could take place. The plot created mass hysteria throughout the Carolinas and the South. Brown, suspected but never convicted of knowledge of the plot, went north to Philadelphia where he eventually became the second bishop of the AME denomination.
During the Vesey controversy, the AME church was burned. Worship services continued after the church was rebuilt until 1834 when all black churches were outlawed. The congregation continued the tradition of the African church by worshipping underground until 1865 when it was formally reorganized, and the name Emanuel was adopted, meaning "God with us". The wooden two-story church that was built on the present site in 1872 was destroyed by the devastating earthquake of August 31, 1886. The present edifice was completed in 1891 under the pastorate of the Rev. L. Ruffin Nichols. The magnificent brick structure with encircling marble panels was restored, redecorated and stuccoed during the years of 1949-51 under the leadership of the Rev. Frank R. Veal. The bodies of the Rev. Nichols and his wife were exhumed and entomed in the base of the steeple so that they may forever be with the Emanuel that they helped to nurture.
The Reverend Honorable Clementa C. Pinckney was born July 30, 1973 the son of Mr. John Pinckney and the late Theopia Stevenson Pinckney of Ridgeland, South Carolina. He was educated in the public schools of Jasper County. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Allen University with a degree in Business Administration. While there, Reverend Pinckney served as freshman class president, student body president, and senior class president. Ebony Magazine recognized Rev. Pinckney as one the "Top College Students in America". During his junior year, he received a Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson Summer Research Fellowship in the fields of public policy and international affairs. He received a graduate fellowship to the University of South Carolina where he earned a Master's degree in public administration. He completed a Master's of Divinity from the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary.
Rev. Pinckney answered the call to preach at the age of thirteen and received his first appointment to pastor at the age of eighteen. He has served the following charges: Young's Chapel-Irmo, The Port Royal Circuit, Mount Horr-Yonges Island, Presiding Elder of the Wateree District and Campbell Chapel, Bluffton. He serves as the pastor of historic Mother Emanuel A.M.E. in Charleston, South Carolina.
Rev. Pinckney was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1996 at the age of twenty-three. In 2000, he was elected to the State Senate at the age of twenty-seven. He is one of the youngest persons and the youngest African-American in South Carolina to be elected to the State Legislature. He represents Jasper, Beaufort, Charleston, Colleton, and Hampton Counties. His committee assignments include Senate Finance, Banking and Insurance, Transportation, Medical Affairs and Corrections and Penology. Washington Post columnist, David Broder, called Rev. Pinckney a "political spirit lifter for suprisingly not becoming cynical about politics."
Rev. Pinckney has served in other capacities in the state to include a college trustee and corporate board member. In May 2010, he delivered the Commencement Address for the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary.
He leaves behind his wife and two children.
The mass murder of nine people who gathered Wednesday night for Bible study at a landmark black church has shaken a city whose history from slavery to the Civil War to the present is inseparable from the nation’s anguished struggle with race.
Fourteen hours after the massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, in which the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, the church pastor and a prominent state senator, was among the dead, the police in Shelby, N.C., acting on a tip from a motorist, on Thursday arrested Dylann Storm Roof, a 21-year-old white man with an unsettled personal life and a recent history of anti-black views.
The killings, with victims ranging in age from 26 to 87, left people stunned and grieving. Witnesses said Mr. Roof sat with church members for an hour and then started venting against African-Americans and opened fire on the group.
At Morris Brown A.M.E. Church here, blacks, whites, Christians and Jews gathered to proclaim that a racist gunman would not divide a community already tested by the fatal police shooting in April of an unarmed African-American, Walter Scott.
“We cannot make sense of what has happened, but we can come together,” declared the Rev. George Felder Jr., pastor of New Hope A.M.E. Church.
The tragedy had a particular resonance in a city that offers perhaps the sharpest contrast in the South between its cosmopolitan, tolerant present and its antebellum past, when Charleston was the capital of the slave trade. It was in Charleston that a state convention adopted the “ordinance of secession” in December 1860, putting South Carolina on a path to become the first state to leave the Union, and the first shots of the Civil War were fired four months later at Fort Sumter.
The shooting reignited demands that the South Carolina Legislature end its practice of flying the Confederate battle flag on the grounds of the state Capitol in Columbia.
The Civil War was over in 1865. Some things are tradition, like the dollar bill that to date never caused strife. Maybe it's overtime to finally retire the flag that honors only division and war? I think Southern Spirit has better ways to identify itself these days, one that can fit everyone in it's movement forward into the future. Now would be a significant time and a positive way to honor that intent.
A great way to honor to these respected people that lost their lives.
Depayne Middletown Doctor was a 49-year-old retiree. She was a mother of four daughters and retired as the director of the Community Development Block Grant Program in Charleston County.
Cynthia Hurd’s death was confirmed by her employer of 31 years, the Charleston County Public Library. The library system closed all 16 of its branches Thursday and put out a statement expressing its condolences for Hurd and her family. Hurd was the regional library manager at St. Andrews Regional Library.
“Cynthia was a tireless servant of the community who spent her life helping residents, making sure they had every opportunity for an education and personal growth,” the statement read.
Susie Jackson had reportedly just visited family members two weeks ago. She was an 87-year-old longtime member of the Emanuel AME Church. Jackson’s cousin Ethel Lance was also killed during the shooting.
Ethel Lance, 70, retired as a Gilliard Center employee but picked up hours working as a church janitor.
The Rev. Clementa Pinckney was the consummate community leader, serving as the pastor of the Emanuel AME Church and also as a state senator. President Obama said Thursday that both he and his wife, Michelle, knew Pinckney. Former Secretary of State and current presidential candidate Hillary Clinton reportedly made sure to meet with the reverend during her stop in South Carolina to drum up support for her campaign.
Bakari Sellers, a trial attorney and friend of Pinckney, described the state senator and pulpit leader as an “all-around good guy.”
According to CNN’s Jake Tapper, Vice President Joe Biden also described the last time he saw Pinckney less than a year ago at a prayer breakfast in Columbia, further demonstrating Pinckney’s reach and significance in the South Carolina community.
Tywanza Sanders—a 26-year-old recent graduate of Allen University in Columbia, S.C.—had reportedly jumped in front of a relative when the shooting began in order to shield his loved one from harm, according to an account told to BuzzFeed News by ABC News 4 reporter Tessa Spencer. Spencer knew Sanders because Sanders worked at a barbershop with Spencer’s brother.
“They said he jumped in front of his aunt or grandmother,” Spencer said. She said that Sanders’ family member also died in the shooting.
Spencer described how Sanders had graduated from Allen’s Division of Business Administration last year.
Like the Rev. Pinckney, the Rev. Dr. Daniel Simmons Sr., 74, was also a pastor at the Emanuel AME Church. Simmons was a member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity—one of the historically black Greek fraternities. Simmons attended Allen University and graduated in 1966. Simmons is the only victim who did not die immediately at the church. He was taken to a local hospital and died in the operating room.
Sharonda Coleman-Singleton coached the girls track team at Goose Greek High School. It was her son, Chris Singleton, who posted a message on Twitter Wednesday night, asking for people to pray for his mother and their family, tweeting that “something extremely terrible” had happened to his mom. Singleton was a mother of three and a reverend. Students from Goose Greek High School posted a message on Facebook expressing their love for the coach: “We love you, Coach Singleton,” the message read. “Gator Nation is where it is today because of your leadership. You have our thoughts and prayers.”
Myra Thompson, 59, was one of three pastors killed at the Emanuel AME Church.
www.theroot.com/articles/news/2015/06/the_9_victims_of_the_charleston_south_carolina_church_massacre.html
abcnews.go.com/US/charleston-shooting-mourners-gather-prayer-service-morris-brown/story?id=31855986
www.emanuelamechurch.org/revpinckney.php
In 1787, Richard Allen and others of African descent withdrew from St. George's Methodist Church in Philadelphia because of unkind treatment and restrictions placed upon the worshispers of African descent. After Allen left St. George's Methodist Church, he and his followers purchased a blacksmith shop for thirty-five dollars. From the blacksmith shop they worshipped and helped the sick and the poor. The blacksmith shop was converted into a church. They called the new church Bethel.
In 1816 Allen called together sixteen representatives from Bethel African Church in Philadelphia and African churches in Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey to meet in Philadelphia. The movement blossomed and the African Methodist Episcopal Chucrh was organized. Richard Allen was the first bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
The AME Church has never strayed from the course charted by Richard Allen. The church is wedded to the spiritual doctrine of "God our Father, Christ our Redeemer, Man our Brother".
The history of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church reflects the development of religious institutions for African Americans in Charleston. Dating back to the fall of 1787 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Richard Allen founded the Free African Society, adhering to the Doctrines of Methodism established by John Wesley. In 1816, black members of Charleston's Methodist Episcopal church withdrew over disputed burial ground, and under the leadership of Morris Brown. The Rev. Morris Brown organized a church of persons of color and sought to have it affiliated with Allen's church. Three churches arose under the Free African Society and were named the "Bethel Circuit". One of the Circuit churches was located in the suburbs of Ansonborough, Hampstead, and Cow Alley, now known as Philadelphia Alley in the French Quarters of Charleston. Emanuel's congregation grew out of the Hampstead Church, located at Reid and Hanover Streets.
In 1822 the church was investigated for its involvement with a planned slave revolt. Denmark Vesey, one of the church's founders, organized a major slave uprising in Charleston. Vesey was raised in slavery in the Virgin Islands among newly imported Africans. He was the personal servant of slavetrader Captain Joseph Vesey, who settled in Charleston in 1783. Beginning in December 1821, Vesey began to organize a slave rebellion, but authorities were informed of the plot before it could take place. The plot created mass hysteria throughout the Carolinas and the South. Brown, suspected but never convicted of knowledge of the plot, went north to Philadelphia where he eventually became the second bishop of the AME denomination.
During the Vesey controversy, the AME church was burned. Worship services continued after the church was rebuilt until 1834 when all black churches were outlawed. The congregation continued the tradition of the African church by worshipping underground until 1865 when it was formally reorganized, and the name Emanuel was adopted, meaning "God with us". The wooden two-story church that was built on the present site in 1872 was destroyed by the devastating earthquake of August 31, 1886. The present edifice was completed in 1891 under the pastorate of the Rev. L. Ruffin Nichols. The magnificent brick structure with encircling marble panels was restored, redecorated and stuccoed during the years of 1949-51 under the leadership of the Rev. Frank R. Veal. The bodies of the Rev. Nichols and his wife were exhumed and entomed in the base of the steeple so that they may forever be with the Emanuel that they helped to nurture.
The Reverend Honorable Clementa C. Pinckney was born July 30, 1973 the son of Mr. John Pinckney and the late Theopia Stevenson Pinckney of Ridgeland, South Carolina. He was educated in the public schools of Jasper County. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Allen University with a degree in Business Administration. While there, Reverend Pinckney served as freshman class president, student body president, and senior class president. Ebony Magazine recognized Rev. Pinckney as one the "Top College Students in America". During his junior year, he received a Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson Summer Research Fellowship in the fields of public policy and international affairs. He received a graduate fellowship to the University of South Carolina where he earned a Master's degree in public administration. He completed a Master's of Divinity from the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary.
Rev. Pinckney answered the call to preach at the age of thirteen and received his first appointment to pastor at the age of eighteen. He has served the following charges: Young's Chapel-Irmo, The Port Royal Circuit, Mount Horr-Yonges Island, Presiding Elder of the Wateree District and Campbell Chapel, Bluffton. He serves as the pastor of historic Mother Emanuel A.M.E. in Charleston, South Carolina.
Rev. Pinckney was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1996 at the age of twenty-three. In 2000, he was elected to the State Senate at the age of twenty-seven. He is one of the youngest persons and the youngest African-American in South Carolina to be elected to the State Legislature. He represents Jasper, Beaufort, Charleston, Colleton, and Hampton Counties. His committee assignments include Senate Finance, Banking and Insurance, Transportation, Medical Affairs and Corrections and Penology. Washington Post columnist, David Broder, called Rev. Pinckney a "political spirit lifter for suprisingly not becoming cynical about politics."
Rev. Pinckney has served in other capacities in the state to include a college trustee and corporate board member. In May 2010, he delivered the Commencement Address for the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary.
He leaves behind his wife and two children.
The mass murder of nine people who gathered Wednesday night for Bible study at a landmark black church has shaken a city whose history from slavery to the Civil War to the present is inseparable from the nation’s anguished struggle with race.
Fourteen hours after the massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, in which the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, the church pastor and a prominent state senator, was among the dead, the police in Shelby, N.C., acting on a tip from a motorist, on Thursday arrested Dylann Storm Roof, a 21-year-old white man with an unsettled personal life and a recent history of anti-black views.
The killings, with victims ranging in age from 26 to 87, left people stunned and grieving. Witnesses said Mr. Roof sat with church members for an hour and then started venting against African-Americans and opened fire on the group.
At Morris Brown A.M.E. Church here, blacks, whites, Christians and Jews gathered to proclaim that a racist gunman would not divide a community already tested by the fatal police shooting in April of an unarmed African-American, Walter Scott.
“We cannot make sense of what has happened, but we can come together,” declared the Rev. George Felder Jr., pastor of New Hope A.M.E. Church.
The tragedy had a particular resonance in a city that offers perhaps the sharpest contrast in the South between its cosmopolitan, tolerant present and its antebellum past, when Charleston was the capital of the slave trade. It was in Charleston that a state convention adopted the “ordinance of secession” in December 1860, putting South Carolina on a path to become the first state to leave the Union, and the first shots of the Civil War were fired four months later at Fort Sumter.
The shooting reignited demands that the South Carolina Legislature end its practice of flying the Confederate battle flag on the grounds of the state Capitol in Columbia.
The Civil War was over in 1865. Some things are tradition, like the dollar bill that to date never caused strife. Maybe it's overtime to finally retire the flag that honors only division and war? I think Southern Spirit has better ways to identify itself these days, one that can fit everyone in it's movement forward into the future. Now would be a significant time and a positive way to honor that intent.
A great way to honor to these respected people that lost their lives.
Depayne Middletown Doctor was a 49-year-old retiree. She was a mother of four daughters and retired as the director of the Community Development Block Grant Program in Charleston County.
Cynthia Hurd’s death was confirmed by her employer of 31 years, the Charleston County Public Library. The library system closed all 16 of its branches Thursday and put out a statement expressing its condolences for Hurd and her family. Hurd was the regional library manager at St. Andrews Regional Library.
“Cynthia was a tireless servant of the community who spent her life helping residents, making sure they had every opportunity for an education and personal growth,” the statement read.
Susie Jackson had reportedly just visited family members two weeks ago. She was an 87-year-old longtime member of the Emanuel AME Church. Jackson’s cousin Ethel Lance was also killed during the shooting.
Ethel Lance, 70, retired as a Gilliard Center employee but picked up hours working as a church janitor.
The Rev. Clementa Pinckney was the consummate community leader, serving as the pastor of the Emanuel AME Church and also as a state senator. President Obama said Thursday that both he and his wife, Michelle, knew Pinckney. Former Secretary of State and current presidential candidate Hillary Clinton reportedly made sure to meet with the reverend during her stop in South Carolina to drum up support for her campaign.
Bakari Sellers, a trial attorney and friend of Pinckney, described the state senator and pulpit leader as an “all-around good guy.”
According to CNN’s Jake Tapper, Vice President Joe Biden also described the last time he saw Pinckney less than a year ago at a prayer breakfast in Columbia, further demonstrating Pinckney’s reach and significance in the South Carolina community.
Tywanza Sanders—a 26-year-old recent graduate of Allen University in Columbia, S.C.—had reportedly jumped in front of a relative when the shooting began in order to shield his loved one from harm, according to an account told to BuzzFeed News by ABC News 4 reporter Tessa Spencer. Spencer knew Sanders because Sanders worked at a barbershop with Spencer’s brother.
“They said he jumped in front of his aunt or grandmother,” Spencer said. She said that Sanders’ family member also died in the shooting.
Spencer described how Sanders had graduated from Allen’s Division of Business Administration last year.
Like the Rev. Pinckney, the Rev. Dr. Daniel Simmons Sr., 74, was also a pastor at the Emanuel AME Church. Simmons was a member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity—one of the historically black Greek fraternities. Simmons attended Allen University and graduated in 1966. Simmons is the only victim who did not die immediately at the church. He was taken to a local hospital and died in the operating room.
Sharonda Coleman-Singleton coached the girls track team at Goose Greek High School. It was her son, Chris Singleton, who posted a message on Twitter Wednesday night, asking for people to pray for his mother and their family, tweeting that “something extremely terrible” had happened to his mom. Singleton was a mother of three and a reverend. Students from Goose Greek High School posted a message on Facebook expressing their love for the coach: “We love you, Coach Singleton,” the message read. “Gator Nation is where it is today because of your leadership. You have our thoughts and prayers.”
Myra Thompson, 59, was one of three pastors killed at the Emanuel AME Church.
www.theroot.com/articles/news/2015/06/the_9_victims_of_the_charleston_south_carolina_church_massacre.html
abcnews.go.com/US/charleston-shooting-mourners-gather-prayer-service-morris-brown/story?id=31855986