It’s a good day, with the ruling, but it’s also the day of Clementa Pinckney’s funeral.

There’s live video of the funeral service.

And live updating by the Guardian.

The pastor is singing – Ship of Zion. Quite impossible not to be moved by it.

The Obamas and Biden have arrived. Everyone is singing “It is well in my soul.” There are a lot of pastors in purple on the…stage? Podium? The raised place in front, facing the congregation. It occurs to me that they can all be thinking, “I could have been one.”

“Put his eyes to the telescope of eternity.”

This song I actually know.

The Guardian is transcribing live for me, so I don’t … Read the rest

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The first two funerals for the victims of the racist shootings in Charleston are being held today.

The services for Ethel Lee Lance and Sharonda Coleman-Singleton will both take place after viewings at Baptist churches in North Charleston.

Ms Lance, 70, worked for the church for 30 years and was a mother of five.

Abigail Darlington at the Charleston Post and Courier wrote a profile of Lance last week.

Ethel Lance loved to dress up and take her family to see performances at the Gaillard Municipal Auditorium when she wasn’t on duty there as a custodian.

She started working at the venue in 1968 when it first opened, and she stayed until retirement in 2002, according to Cam Patterson, director

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The Times did some background on Emanuel AME church and Clementa Pinckney the other day.

Intentionally or not, the gunman had found in Emanuel A.M.E., and in its 41-year-old pastor, rich symbols to attack with deadly racial hatred. Pastor Pinckney was a well-known civil rights leader in Charleston. He was elected to the South Carolina House at age 23, and then to the State Senate at age 27.

After Walter Scott, an African-American, was shot in the back by a North Charleston police officer in April, Mr. Pinckney helped guide through the State Legislature a bill requiring officers to wear body cameras.

Jaime Harrison, chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party and a friend of Mr. Pinckney’s since their teenage

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Rick Perry called the terrorist shooting at Emanuel AME church an “accident” while complaining about Obama’s suggestion that unrestricted availability of guns is not a fabulous idea.

The former Texas governor was asked about the mass shooting at Emanuel AME church during an interview with the conservative NewsmaxTV. A spokesman for Perry later clarified that the Republican presidential candidate meant to say “incident,” but the soundbyte drew immediate attention and backlash.

Hi, just an ordinary citizen here, but I think “incident” is a pretty callous word to use too. That was no incident, that was a racist mass murder.

In addition to steering the conversation away from race and terrorism, Perry also accused Barack Obama of trying to take

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Why is there even “debate” about the slavery flag?

The conflict over the banner of the Confederacy has been raging for decades between those who feel it is a symbol of free speech, and others who see it as a symbol of white supremacy.

What?

Who the hell sees that rag as a symbol of free speech? Of course it’s not – it’s no such thing. (The Confederacy outlawed lots of kinds of speech, because it had to, because it held people in slavery. It couldn’t afford free speech. It was a tyranny keeping a majority in chains – does that sound like a home of free speech to you?) If you see the Confederate flag you don’t think … Read the rest

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All nine.

… Read the rest

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Dan Wasserman of the Boston Globe tweeted his own cartoon:

 … Read the rest

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A little about the history of Charleston, South Carolina.

The 1808 ban on the United States’ participation in the international slave trade led to a renewed demand for slave labor, which was satisfied, in part, by the creation of a domestic slave-trading system in which Charleston functioned as a major slave collecting and reselling center. The Old Slave Mart Museum, located at 6 Chalmers St., recounts the story of Charleston’s role in this inter-state slave trade by focusing on the history of this particular building and site and the slave sales that occurred here.

In the seven decades between the drafting of the U.S. Constitution and the Civil War, more than one million American-born slaves were sold away from

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Rebecca Carroll yesterday at Comment is Free.

Six black women were shot to death during a community prayer service by a young white man who allegedly declared: “You rape our women.”

These women and men welcomed a white man into their close-knit church, and likely encouraged others in their community to join and listen and pray and let God into their hearts.

I read somewhere else yesterday that during the hour discussion that preceded the terrorist attack, while the terrorist sat at the back of the church, people at the front several times urged him to join them. That fact breaks my heart.

And think of it. He sat there for an hour, staring ahead at a group of kind, … Read the rest

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