Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church

Mother Emanuel traces the history of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, from its founding in 1817 through the present day. The church gained national attention on June 17, 2015, when a twenty-one-year-old white supremacist killed the pastor and eight worshippers during Bible study. Rather than inciting racial conflict as intended, the shooting prompted an outpouring of forgiveness from the victims' families. Author Kevin Sack examines how African Methodism developed in America and how Black suffering became intertwined with forgiveness as both religious practice and survival mechanism. The book uses Mother Emanuel as a lens to explore Black life in Charleston, the city where nearly half of enslaved Africans arrived in North America and where the Civil War began. Sack traces the congregation's evolution from its breakaway from white churches in 1817 through the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Movement, and beyond. The narrative documents how the church and its community endured enslavement, Jim Crow laws, and violence while maintaining their faith and confronting the racial divisions that have shaped Charleston and the South since European settlement.