Honoring Mother Emanuel

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Charleston Library Society Penguin Random HouseCrown Publishing

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Mother Emanuel book cover

Just ahead of the 10 year anniversary, we are incredibly honored to host New York Times and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Kevin Sack in conversation with reporter Carolyn Murray, for the pub-day release of Mother Emanuel, a comprehensive history of one of the nation’s most important African American churches and the profound story of courage and grace that came amidst the tragedy of the shootings that took the lives of the church’s charismatic pastor and eight other worshippers on June 17, 2015. Even as the first A.M.E church in the South, few people beyond our Lowcountry knew of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston—Mother Emanuel—before that night. The outpouring of forgiveness from the victim’s families that followed exhibited a resilience this nation has never seen. Through the microcosm of this congregation, Sack explores the development of a unique practice of Christianity, from its daring breakaway from white churches in 1817, through the traumas of Civil War and Reconstruction, to its critical role in the Civil Rights Movement and beyond. At its core, Mother Emanuel is an epic tale of perseverance, not just of a congregation, but of a people who withstood enslavement and Jim Crow and all manner of violence with an unbending faith.

If you are unable to attend the event, but would like to purchase one or more signed copies, please visit the Buxton Books website.

About the Book

Mother Emanuel explores the fascinating history that brought the church to this moment, and the depth of the desecration committed in its fellowship hall. It reveals how African Methodism cultivated from the harshest American soil, and how Black suffering shaped forgiveness into both a religious practice and a survival tool. Kevin Sack, who has written about race in his native South for more than four decades, uses the church to trace the long arc of Black life in the city where nearly half of enslaved Africans disembarked in North America and where the Civil War began. We’ll meet unsung heroes like Denmark Vesey, the former slave whose aborted rebellion plot led to his hanging and the destruction of the original church; Rev. Richard Harvey Cain, Emanuel’s first pastor after the Civil War, who also won election to Congress during Reconstruction; Rev. Benjamin J. Glover, who served simultaneously as pastor and a crusading NAACP leader during the 1960s; and Reverend Clementa Pinckney, a respected state legislator, whose murder in 2015 inspired President Barack Obama’s memorable “Amazing Grace” eulogy.

About the Author

Kevin Sack is a veteran journalist who has written broadly about national affairs for more than four decades and has shared in three Pulitzer Prizes. A native of Jacksonville, Florida, and a graduate of Duke University, he spent thirty years on the staff of The New York Times, where he specialized in writing longform narrative and investigative reports, often related to race. He also has written for the Los Angeles Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and his work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine. He was a 2019 Emerson Collective Fellow at New America.

About Carolyn Murray

Murray, a native of New York, grew up in Charleston and graduated from Burke High School in 1984 and later from the University of South Carolina in 1988. It was during her senior year at USC when she interned at WPAL-AM in Charleston — an internship that would catapult a celebrated career in delivering the latest news and vital information to her own community. Murray left Charleston in 2001 to work as a consumer reporter at WBBM-TV in Chicago but ultimately made her return to the Lowcountry in 2003, joining the WCBD-TV team as an evening anchor. Murray has been awarded numerous EMMYs for her anchoring and reporting through the years, along with various awards and accolades from industry leaders. She delivers the news weekly on News 2 at 4, 5, 6, 11pm and on the Lowcountry CW at 10pm.

This is a ticketed event!

Price: $50.00 - $60.00