The Charleston Killings: Indictment of a Racist System
The Freedom Socialist Party joins millions of Americans in expressing our condolences to the families, friends and congregation of those killed in Charleston, South Carolina by white supremacist Dylann Roof. We join with the #BlackLivesMatter and #StandWithCharleston movements in calling for widespread actions to protest these deaths and the forces behind the carnage.
Mother Emanuel Church: a symbol of Black resistance
Amidst the gunfire at the Charleston church, a young Black girl lay still, playing dead to avoid the carnage. But she couldn’t avoid the racist rants of the white gunman: “You are raping our women and taking over the country.”
The 22 year-old shooter was merely recycling the ancient arguments of the Klan and Nazis whose ideology he clearly shares in word and deed. Roof was aiming to stop growing protests against racist killer cops who continue to shoot and injure with impunity across the U.S. His words were aimed at inflaming a race war in this country.
They were also meant to destroy all that Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church represents in the struggle against racism and forced servitude. The church was built by Denmark Vesey, a former slave who in 1822 planned the largest slave revolt in U.S. history. He was caught and hung before the rebellion could take place, and the church was burned by a white mob. The history of this revolt was suppressed by wealthy slave owners who ran the nearby slave market. But Vesey’s son rebuilt the church and it became a stop on the Underground Railroad. In the 1960s, it became a center of organizing for civil and labor rights.
