June 17, 2015

June 17, 2015, is the point at which a long-assumed distance between past racial terror and present life collapses for Austin. The attack on Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston makes the danger to Black churches immediate again, changing what entering such a church can mean to her.

Date and Historical Context

The date anchors a contemporary act of violence in a history Austin had learned about as a child. She knew the story of the four Black girls killed in the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, but had not understood how regularly bombings had been used to intimidate Black communities. That church bombing came amid the struggle over school integration, and only eighteen days after the March on Washington. To Austin, the story had been part of history; she had wondered what it would have meant to love church in that earlier time, but had not yet felt that question reach into her own life.

The Attack Enters the Narrative

On the evening of June 17, Austin was about to go to sleep when she saw a tweet from an MSNBC anchor reporting a shooting at a Black church. The brief announcement left her heart sinking; she considered a racially motivated attack overwhelmingly likely. She turned on the television and watched as long as she could bear. A white supremacist had entered Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church with a Glock 41 and taken as many lives as he could. Austin’s response was not detached attention to a news story: she felt that her beloved Church had been attacked again.

A Church Beyond the Map

Austin had never visited Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, did not know its congregation, and had not known the pastor’s name or the names of those killed. That distance did not protect her from feeling the violation. The attack’s reach, as she understands it, lies partly in its intended terror beyond the people and place directly targeted. The date therefore marks not only violence against one congregation but the extension of fear to Black church communities elsewhere, including the church Austin regards as home.

The Loss of Assumed Safety

Before June 17, Austin had never feared walking into a Black church. She understood such churches as hospitable places, full of people who welcomed visitors, embraced them, and offered encouragement. Even the shooter had received love from the congregation on the night of the attack. The contrast between that welcome and the violence makes the rupture especially stark: church hospitality had not prevented the assault, and the attack made inherited fears of bombings and political killings feel present rather than safely past. June 17, 2015, thus becomes a boundary in Austin’s memory—the date after which entering a Black church could no longer feel free of the terror her parents and grandparents had known.