Nine people are dead following a shooting in a historic Black church in Charleston, South Carolina.
According to CNN, the suspect, 21-year-old Dylann Roof, spent an hour in a prayer meeting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church before he opened fire and told his victims he was there, “to shoot Black people.”
In what officials are calling a hate crime, six women and three men were killed including the church’s well-known pastor and state senator, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney.
The Black community is no stranger to being the targets of senseless hate crimes. With the racial climate in America reaching higher heights daily, including but not limited to the recent influx of police brutality incidents, we want to know what your first reaction to the Charleston shooting was? Were you angry? In shock? Or numb to yet another heartbreaking story involving the loss of Black lives?
Share your thoughts below.
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