Mother Emanuel Nine: Their Influence Was Wide

                    Mother
Emanuel African Methodist
Episcopal Church Nine
Senior pastor state senator
Name meaning “merciful”
Church eldress, oldest to be shot
Great grandnephew tries to shield her
        First and youngest shot
College administrator and pastor
        Doctor her last name not a title
Sunday school teacher
Track coach and pastor
Librarian
Church sexton
Seventy-four-year-old pastor

Two played dead

All women except two men

Shot while praying

And being black (and trusting).
Say their names:

Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, forty-five
Susie Jackson, eighty-seven
Myra Thompson, fifty-nine
Daniel Simmons, seventy-four
Ethel Lance, seventy
Cynthia Hurd, fifty-four
DePayne Middleton Doctor, forty-nine
Clementa Pinckney, forty-one
Tywanza Sanders, twenty-six

In one of the oldest black churches (older than the Confederate flag)

Denmark Vesey cofounder

Two hundred and three years old

Mother Emanuel
African
Methodist
Episcopal
Church
Nine

Remember Birmingham Sunday?
This horror unfolded on a Wednesday.
                        Mother Emmanuel
                                African
                        Methodist
                                Episcopal
                        Church
                                Nine

Say their names

Source: Poetry (July/August 2024)