The slayings at Emanuel AME sparked a surge or long-overdue reforms. It served as the impetus to finally remove the confederate flag from the statehouse grounds Charleston. Black people and their allies have long viewed the Confederate flag as the symbol par excellence of white supremacy. The murder of nine black people in a Bible study finally convinced enough white people that the Confederate flag might actually represent not heritage but hate.
Mayor Mitch Landrieu cited the Mother Emanuel tragedy as part of the motivation for his bold stand to take down the Confederate monuments in New Orleans. Landrieu first started calling for the monuments to come down less than a week after the Emanuel Nine were killed.
Racial progress is not a myth, but neither is it a completed project. We have come a long way from race-based chattel slavery. We have come a long way from signs over drinking fountains and riding the back of the bus. We have come a long way from preventing black people from sitting in the pews alongside white people.
But let’s not use racial progress as a reason to ignore the ways racism reinvents itself….
Today marks the Anniversary of the Murder of the Emanuel Nine, read @JemarTisby reflections: “Racial progress is not a myth, but neither is it a completed project…But let’s not use racial progress as a reason to ignore the ways racism reinvents itself.”https://t.co/Ao3Sg9ksld
— The Witness (@TheWitnessBCC) June 17, 2019