Camille: Fighting Hate With Love

Camille Taylor

WJBC Forum

Last week, Not In Our Town organized a communitywide prayer vigil at Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church for the nine people killed at the Mother Immanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Around 300 people attended a truly ecumenical service. Everyone came to reflect, pray, and stand united against hate.

Rev. Frank McSwain, from Mt. Pisgah, and Pastor Kelley Becker, from First Christian Church, touched the crowd with their words. Rev. McSwain repeated several times, “together we stand, divided we fall,” and explored what happens when people come together or find ways to separate themselves. He noted that people/experiences have made “deposits into our thinking” during our lives, and over time this has contributed to the people we’ve become.

My thoughts went to the accused gunman, Dylan Roof, and I wondered what people/experiences made deposits into his thinking over the 21 years of his life. I flashbacked to two visits I made to South Carolina. On my first visit to Charleston, my ex-husband and I were “greeted” by white hotel staff in the parking lot when we pulled up in our new 1984 Chevy conversion van. The staff wanted to know who we were delivering the vehicle for. We had no idea what they were talking about and only wanted to check-in and go to sleep. They were angered when we insisted it was ours and demanded to see our license, insurance, and registration. After seeing the items, they grumbled, and we followed them reluctantly inside thinking, “Can’t black people own a van?” We had to stay, because it was a two week Naval Reserve assignment, and the hotel was already paid for.  

I remarried 21 years ago. While on my honeymoon, we drove from Florida to Washington, DC. and stopped at a secluded rest stop in South Carolina. We got out; noticing the van next to us had a large Confederate flag covering the window with a sign saying, “Save the land, join the Klan!” I didn’t want either of us to go into the restroom unsure of who/ what we would face.

Those are just two deposits that have fueled my life’s quest for equality and respect. Not In Our Town’s mission is to have a safe, inclusive community.

Last week’s vigil is another example toward that goal. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “…Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”

Twin Citians Offer Prayers, Messages, $1,400 in Donations for Charleston's Victims

More than 250 Twin Citians -- black, white, members of a variety of local churches -- joined Wednesday night at Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church for a powerful prayer vigil and candle-lighting for the nine victims of last week's Charleston church shootings.

Beyond individual prayers for the victims and their families, their community, and the Twin Cities, area residents at the event raised more than $1,400 to be donated to the families of the victims of 21-year-old shooter Dylann Roof.

"Hate was defeated by love tonight," concluded Willie Holton Halbert, a leader with vigil host Not In Our Town: Bloomington/Normal and vigil leader. "The Vision came alive! Just look at the rainbow of hope -- equality is possible!

"I had to share as I reflected and (Halbert's husband) Charles showed me the rainbow that stood over the church as we began the  prayer vigil. Let's keep the momentum going as people are wanting to be engage."

Mt. Pisgah Pastor Frank L. McSwain delivered the evening's central message (listen to audio below), arguing the need for community wide unity and understanding to ensure mankind's survival "as a race."

He called for examination of the hatred, attitudes, and environment that led Roof to murder the Charleston parishioners after spending an hour with them in Bible study, while the minister emphasized the ongoing human and societal pain caused by overt, institutional, or even casual bigotry and bullying.

"You don't have to shoot somebody to kill them," McSwain said, urging the group to "go beyond the limitations of your own humanity" and both resist the social "status quo" and "learn to love somebody." McSwain cited the abuse his family faced at white hands and his lighter-skinned mother's determination to "prove she was still with us."

"Should I have hate in my heart?" he posed. "You can't have hate in your heart with Jesus living there at the same time. . .When you establish a relationship with people, and you come to respect people for who they are, you'll come to find out they know a little bit more than you and they can help you more than you thought they could. How valuable is it for us to be together as a people? Together, we stand; divided, we fall."

Vigil participants left hand prints on a message paper roll and wrote a messages to the families in Charleston, and NIOT:B/N distributed anti-bigotry/anti-bullying pledge cards. Local youths with their parents lit candles and led prayers for each of the nine victims, and representatives of Bloomington's Second Presbyterian Church, First Christian Church and Moses Montefiore Temple offered devotions. In her closing benediction, First Christian Associate Minister Kelley Becker asked to "enable us, despite our circumstances, to live together, respecting, embracing, and loving one another."

Mt. Pisgah youth choir director Shirley Boykins led the group in the hymn We Need You to Survive before participants linked in a Unity Circle around the Mt. Pisgah sanctuary.

Meanwhile, vigil guest Bloomington Police Chief Brendan Heffner asked the community to join his department in fighting racism and potential violence to help ensure a Charleston-style tragedy never occurs in the Twin Cities. Heffner reiterated the BPD's commitment to "serve and give back to you in the community."

 "We have to be strong together," the chief stressed. "If you see something, say something. And work with us so that we can hopefully help a prevent a tragedy like that. It's going to take all of us working together.

"We may not always get along -- we may disagree on some things. But the bottom line is, we are all here together."

Local Churches Joining for Wednesday Charleston Vigil

Not In Our Town: Bloomington/Normal and local churches are participating in aVigil Prayer Service to lift up the families in Charleston, the South Carolina community, and the nation with prayer and reflection from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday at Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church, 801 West Market Street, Bloomington.

In addition to lighting nine candles in memory of and offering individual prayers lifting up each of the nine victims of last week's racially motivated shooting spree at Charleston's Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the vigil will include a communal sing and one-sentence prayers from those in attendance. Bloomington's Second Presbyterian Church, First Christian Church, and Moses Montefiore Temple are expected to lead devotions at the event.

NIOT:B/N leader Marc Miller stressed the assembly also is aimed at reaching "those with hate in their hearts that God can turn into love." One image from shooter Dylann Roof's Facebook page showed him wearing a jacket decorated with the flags of two nations noted for their white supremacist and racial segregation policies: Apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia. According to a childhood friend, Roof went on a rant about the shooting of Trayvon Martin and the 2015 Baltimore protests that were sparked by the death of Freddie Gray while Gray was in police custody. He also often claimed that "blacks were taking over the world." Roof reportedly told friends and neighbors of his plans to kill people, including a plot to attack the College of Charleston, but his claims were not taken seriously.

Victims of the church massacre included:

Rev. Clementa Pinckney (NBC news photo)

• Cynthia Marie Graham Hurd (54) – Bible study member and manager for the Charleston County Public Library system
• Susie Jackson (87) – a Bible study and church choir member
• Ethel Lee Lance (70) – the church sexton
• Depayne Middleton-Doctor (49) – a Bible study teacher employed as a school administrator and admissions coordinator at Southern Wesleyan University
• Clementa C. Pinckney (41) – the church pastor and a South Carolina state senator
• Tywanza Sanders (26) – a Bible study member; nephew of Susie Jackson
• Daniel Simmons (74) – a pastor who also served at Greater Zion AME Church in Awendaw
• Sharonda Coleman-Singleton (45) – a pastor; also a speech therapist and track coach at Goose Creek High School
• Myra Thompson (59) – a Bible study teacher