Alana Grant turned on the news the night of June 17th, 2025, and saw her grandfather being taken from Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston on a stretcher.
“He crawled 26 feet after being shot several times,” recalled Grant during a community forum last week.
“He was trying to save people.”
Daniel Simmons Sr. died at the hospital. Inside the church, eight friends lie dead.
The Black parishioners were murdered by a white supremacist intent on starting a race war. Instead, the church massacre brought the community together. And the city vowed never again.
On this, the ten-year anniversary of the tragedy, while loved ones remember victims, the question being asked at town halls across the city is, has Charleston changed?
Marcus McDonald, Charleston Black Lives Matter
“I believe what's changed is that there are people more willing to have a conversation about race,” says Black Lives Matter leader Marcus McDonald, who also took part in the community forum at the Charleston Music Hall.
“But what’s stayed the same is their willingness for action.”
McDonald acknowledges the city did apologize for its former role as the nation’s largest slave port. But, he says, a commission to address racial disparities fell short in 2021, when recommendations he and others made were not accepted because of words like reparations and critical race theory.
The 28-year-old says he’s seeing more peers locked up or living on the street. He points to a desperate need for affordable housing as a post pandemic population boom intensifies gentrification. The median home price in Charleston is now more than $600,000.
McDonald worries about the changes President Donald Trump has made during his first six months in office, increasing tariffs and cutting programs that help feed children and the poor.
“The bottom percent, the people who are struggling. They're going to struggle more,” says McDonald. “There needs to be a power shift, not only in Charleston, but in the United States.”
The Trump administration has also rolled back Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies and programs.
Scarlett Wilson, 9th Circuit Solicitor
“It’s like, equity is a four-letter word now,” says 9th Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson who is a Republican. She took part in the forum too.
“I don't like that. I want to treat people fairly. You call it whatever you want to call it.”
In 2015, Wilson became concerned about fairness in the justice system as she prosecuted two high profile cases, the church gunman and a white police officer who killed a Black man as he fled.
She wanted to conduct a racial bias audit in her office like police did, only the information needed to do so didn’t exist. Wilson began collecting data and released a report four years ago. The study found it takes on average six weeks longer for Black men to have a case dismissed compared to white men.
Wilson is now working to address that.
“I hope this will be my legacy,” says Wilson. “I hope the next solicitor will be compelled to continue collecting this data.”
Bakari Sellers, former statehouse representative
Outside Mother Emanuel, a memorial for the 9 victims and 5 survivors is still in the making. Inside, there’s debate over progress versus change that's needed.
Former state representative and political analyst Bakari Sellers hosted a town hall at the church days before the 10-year anniversary.
“After what happened in the basement of where we’re sitting, we thought SC might be on the precipice of change,” he said.
Sellers says people were hopeful after the confederate flag came down at the statehouse, a statute of slavery supporter John C. Calhoun was removed from a city park, and the new International African American museum opened at Gadsden’s Wharf, the site where Africans were brought ashore and enslaved.
But, Sellers says, more needs to be done.
“I think our country’s always been intent on change after tragedy and that’s part of the problem because the cost of change for Black folk in this country is so high.”
Malcolm Graham, lost his sister
Malcolm Graham agrees. He lost his sister to the church shootings and says while many families quickly forgave the gunman, his family did not. He wishes there’d been more conversation about hatred and racism.
“We got to ask some questions, and we got to make people uncomfortable,” says Graham.
“We got to create healthy tension and allow people to sit in the discomfort of some of the answers.”
Graham just released a book called, “The Way Forward” in honor of his big sister Cynthia Graham Hurd. He says he knows what the longtime librarian would say in this moment.
“You got to make sure that our death is not in vain. And, so dry your eyes, get off your knees, keep the faith and go do the work.”
That work, Graham says, includes getting the state legislature to pass a hate crime law and convince the federal government to close the so-called “Charleston Loophole”. It allowed the killer to buy a gun even though a background check wasn’t complete.
Graham agrees, there needs to be more affordable housing in Charleston, something his sister fought for. And, he says she’d be saddened by recent book bans, as well as nationwide attacks on DEI, universities and museums.
It’s more important now than ever, he says, for people to work together.
“It’s saying if it’s your problem, then it’s my problem too.”
Graham hopes his sister and other victims will be remembered not for how they died, but for how they lived, like welcoming a stranger to bible study the night of June 17, 2015, to share their faith.
Five people survived the shootings: Polly Sheppard, Felicia Sanders and her granddaughter, as well as the pastor's wife Jennifer Pinckney and one of their daughters.
