FLORISSANT: Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton decried the Charleston church massacre as an act of “racist terrorism” Tuesday, and called for the Confederate flag to be removed.
Clinton also called the Confederate flag a “symbol of our nation’s racist past that has no place in our present or our future. It shouldn’t fly there. It shouldn’t fly anywhere.”
She said the killings by 21-year-old suspect Dylann Roof was an indication of entrenched racism in the United States.
“I know it’s tempting to dismiss a tragedy like this as an isolated incident, to believe that in today’s America, bigotry is largely behind us. That institutionalized racism no longer exists,” she said.
On the evening of June 17, 2015, a mass shooting took place at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, United States. The church is one of the United States’ oldest black churches and has long been a site for community organization around civil rights. Nine people were killed, including the senior pastor and state senator, Clementa C. Pinckney. A tenth person was shot and survived.
Police arrested a white suspect, later identified as 21-year-old Dylann Roof, in Shelby, North Carolina the morning after the attack.
