Mother Emanuel
Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church
On behalf of: Kathy Robbins - The Robbins Office, Inc.
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, Kirkus Reviews
A sweeping history of one of the nation’s most important African American churches and a profound story of courage and grace amid the fight for racial justice—from Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Kevin Sack
Few people beyond South Carolina’s Lowcountry knew of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston—Mother Emanuel—before the night of June 17, 2015, when a twenty-one-year-old white supremacist walked into Bible study and slaughtered the church’s charismatic pastor and eight worshippers. Although the shooter had targeted the first AME church in the South in order to agitate racial strife, he did not anticipate the aftermath—an outpouring of forgiveness from the victims’ families and a reckoning with the divisions of caste that have afflicted Charleston and the South since the earliest days of European settlement.
Mother Emanuel explores the fascinating history that brought the church to that moment, and the depth of the desecration committed in its fellowship hall. It reveals how African Methodism was 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. Through the microcosm of one congregation, he 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. We meet unsung heroes, including 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 Rev. Clementa Pinckney, a respected state legislator, whose 2015 murder inspired President Barack Obama’s memorable “Amazing Grace” eulogy.
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.
Reviews
“Mother Emanuel is a masterpiece . . . Sack delivers a dense, rich, captivating narrative, featuring vivid prose, prodigious research and a palpable emotional engagement that is disciplined by a meticulous attention to the facts. His excavation is an essential addition to existing histories and ought to be recognized as a singular journalistic performance.”—The New York Times, Editor’s Choice
“All at once Kevin Sack’s Mother Emanuel is harrowing, despairing and inspiring… Sack writes lyrically, from deep research, and with an unforgettable message about tragedy and resilience. The book is both a modern psalm and testimony, a work of scholarship and a cry in the night.” —David W. Blight, Yale University, and author of the Pulitzer prize-winning Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.
“Big in historical scale but granular in personal detail, Mother Emanuel transcends the church of its title and the crime that made it famous. It feels like a monument to Black America that takes the form of a book.”—Edward Ball, winner of the National Book Award for Slaves in the Family and author of Life of a Klansman
“This book shook me with its power and beauty. Kevin Sack tells the story of a moment of racial terror that turned into an opportunity for grace—and from that terrible story produces an insightful and inspiring work of history. Mother Emanuel is a book of enormous ambition, meticulously researched, gorgeously written, and deeply fulfilling.”—Jonathan Eig, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for King: A Life
“Race, religion, and terror combine for an extraordinary story of America, the resilience of a people, and their capacity to forgive in order to live with unimaginable grief. A powerful book—especially for times such as these.”—Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., James S. McDonnell Distinguished Professor of African American Studies, Princeton University, and author of Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own Affiliation
“This brilliant work of American history is also a whodunit… In Mother Emanuel, Kevin Sack offers a deeply researched, eloquent, page-turner, taking us from colonization and the African slave trade to modern times. Along the way, we feel the myriad ways the past still weighs on us, and we meet visionaries inspired by a more generous Bible, and a more democratic America, than the ones they inherited.”—Melissa Fay Greene, author of Praying For Sheetrock and The Temple Bombing