Ten years ago in Charleston, South Carolina, a white supremacist gunned down nine people at a Bible study inside Mother Emanuel AME Church, the oldest Black church in the South.
The church’s pastor, Clementa Pinckney, was one of the people killed in the massacre. His daughter, Eliana Pinckney, graduated from Philadelphia’s Temple University in May.
Then-President Barack Obama delivered Pinckney’s father’s eulogy.
“I can distinctly remember at 11, knowing the magnitude President Obama held,” she said.
Two days later, at the shooter, Dylan Roof’s, bond hearing, some family members of his victims publicly expressed forgiveness.
Felicia Sanders survived the shooting by playing dead, shielding her granddaughter underneath her. But her son, Tywanza Sanders, was gunned down.
“May God have mercy on you,” Sanders told Roof in court back in 2015.
“I forgive you and my family forgives you,” Thompson said in the courtroom in 2015.
Said Pinckney: “I think forgiveness is a really hard thing and a hard concept. Instead of having a sense of hatred or animosity towards him, I honestly wish for growth for him and anyone surrounded by him. I think that hatred is such a powerful disease that unfortunately, seems to dictate the way our country is run.”
“I’m really passionate about doing art that means things to people,” she said. “That isn’t the reason they came to the theater, but it’s the thing they leave the theater thinking about.”
With her social justice mindset, Pinckney hears her father’s voice. She’s giving life lessons in resilience and forgiveness, both on and off the stage.
“The fact that I still have a family that I can call and check in on … is such a blessing,” she said.
