[A ity, walks into Charleston’s most storied Black…]

Socialist Action, Vol. 33, No. 7, July 2015 · scan p. 3 · Mumia Abu-Jamal · about 412 words

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A ity, walks into Charleston’s most storied Black young white man, barely at the age of his major church and, before he leaves, a new history is writ ten.

Attending the Wednesday night Bible study, he sits for nearly an hour, but his mind isn’t on the life of Jesus or his disciples. It’s on murder, mass murder.

When the door shuts behind him, nine Black souls, elders mostly, had been slain, Bibles in hand.

The man, or boy more than man really, hadn’t come to learn about religion, for he had a belief, white supremacy, or the profound hatred of Black people.

White supremacy is the mother’s milk of Charles ton, of South Carolina, of the South, of America. For These are the remarks of Glen Ford, ex ecutive editor of Black Agenda Report, who spoke at a news conference in Plainfield, N.J., to help build the July 25 Million Per son March in Newark.

I know that everybody here, because you care about justice enough to be here, probably saw the movie “Selma.” And of course, Selma was the great moment, in 1965, that pushed the country over the hill in terms of getting the Voting Rights Act.

Now, there are many folks who think that that was all that Black folks needed—to get the vote—that the movement was over, that there was no need for Black Power, there was no need for an end to income inequal ity. There was no need to agitate for the surely as slavery funded and built America, the un derlying principle was the devaluation, exploitation, and oppression of Black life. It’s the only thing that Nine Black people were sacrificed to the blind idol of white supremacy for the same reason that thousands of Black men and women were lynched on American elms and pines: as sacrifices to an idea, to per petuate a system of economic injustice.

Dylan Roof, the 21 year old accused of this massacre, had no friends to speak of, no place to stay other than an associate’s couch, no job, and a tenuous relationship with his parents. Isolated, alienated, alone in the world, his sole remaining posses sion was his whiteness, the only thing that gave his existence meaning. That was the energy that fueled the massacre in Charleston, South Carolina.

It now sits like an incubus in the Ameri can soul, seething hatred and fear, waiting for more Black lives to consume.