Tag Archives: Charleston Church Murders

Love and Evil are Color-Blind by Wayne T. Dowdy

Current Affairs, Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Emmanuel African church
Emmanuel African Church

Update: May 27, 2022:  While shopping on my day off at Goodwill of North Georgia in McDonough, I was speaking with an off-duty police woman whom I have liked since we met.  We were discussing the recent elementary school shooting in Texas, and the topic of armed police in school and church.

During the conversation, I mentioned having written this blog and the referenced unpublished article about gun control (“Guns Save Lives – Gun Laws Ruin Them”).

Later that evening, I decided to reread this article/blog and was surprised to see that the link to Fox News went to the TX Elementary School Shooting, because at the time that the link was posted by my publisher, the link was not to the specific article (now the Fox News link goes to the Fox News Home Page, and the second link with the title of the article goes to the story. However, the date shown on Fox News for when it was published is not correct. The actual date of the Colorado Springs shooting may be seen by clicking Here to read 2007 Colorado YWAM and New Life shootings).

My thoughts and prayers go out to all of those who suffered the loss of a loved one for any reason, but especially from the recent gun violence in the schools and churches. I can only imagine how much one hurts to lose a child, especially a young child, from such a horrific crime. May God give them peace and comfort.

Because of all of the recent hate-related, prejudicial crimes of late, I am reposting this blog and hope that Love Wins in the End.

Wednesday, June 21, 2015

LOVE AND EVIL ARE COLOR-BLIND

by Wayne T. Dowdy

Wednesday, June 17, 2015:  A twenty-one-year-old, white male, walked into the Emanuel African-Methodist-Episcopalian Church in Charleston, South Carolina, a church known as Mother Emanuel AME. He sat in a bible study for an hour with several  prominent members and pillars of the African-American community. One of those members was forty-one-year-old, state senator, Reverend Clemente Pinckney, who was the youngest state legislator to be elected in South Carolina at the age of twenty-three. The visitor pulled a forty-five caliber handgun and killed him and eight other people whom had welcomed him into their gathering.

He did not murder Ms. Polly Shepherd so she could tell others why he killed her peers: because they were black, had killed his ancestors, raped their women, and because blacks were trying to take over the country.

The other murder victims were twenty-six-year old, Tywanza Sanders; Ms. DePayne Middleton Doctor (49); Ms. Myra Thompson (59); Mr. Daniel Simmons Sr. (74); Ms. Susie Jackson (87); Ms. Ethel Lance (70); Ms. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton (45), an athletics coach & speech specialist; and Cynthia Hurd (54), who was the regional branch manager at the Charleston Public Library System.

The shooter wanted to start a race war. His plan failed. People of different ethnic backgrounds united and remained peaceful. No one used the situation as an opportunity to loot businesses and the community. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. recognized, peace is more powerful than violence. Violence breeds resentment and a desire for revenge. It never ends.

CNN reported that Dylann Roof confessed to the crimes; crimes committed with the gun used to murder those people because of their ethnic background. The State of South Carolina plans to execute him for those crimes. Now his actions have become another drive for American politicians to introduce bills to take away or to restrict their citizens’ Second Amendment right to own guns, and to remove or ban the Confederate Flag from various buildings. The flag did not kill anyone.

Dylann Roof

Personally, I am saddened by the tragedy caused by the shooter’s belief system. Nine innocent people died and a young man will die for taking their lives. Years ago I would have understood the hate and racism behind such a heinous act. Evil lived within me for most of my life.* Today I do not support taking another person’s life or harming them for looking, thinking or being different, or because of something their ancestors may have done.

I believe that only one race of people exists: the human race. I base my opinion about the worth of another person on their actions; not the color of their skin, or their socioeconomic status, or their geographical location, or because of their affiliation with any organization or group. I have friends and associates who feel otherwise, blacks and whites alike. Some of whom may have rejoiced upon hearing about the Charleston Church Massacre; others who are as appalled by it as I am; and even more whose words proclaim racist beliefs, but their daily actions and behaviors do not support their words.

I do not have the gang mentality or a superiority complex. I do not fault anyone who does. To Each Their Own. Everyone has the right to be different. No one has the right to harm another person, unless to protect themselves, their loved ones, or other human beings at imminent risk of death or serious bodily injury.

DC MANSION MURDERS:  Weeks before Roof entered the church, another terrible incident had dominated the news that may have fueled his hate and rage toward blacks. At least one black male who is an immigrant, is accused of torturing, murdering, and then burning a white family and their maid in a Washington, DC Mansion. The criminal act included the murder and torture of the parents’ young son. The motive is unclear as the investigation is still in progress. Racism, or an act of class warfare may have played a role in the gruesome murders, but regardless of the motive, evil won and people died. That didn’t start a race war either.

guns save lives

GUNS SAVE LIVES: The following is an excerpt from an essay I wrote in 2008 and sent to several American magazines to be considered for publication. Each editor passed on my 3,060-word essay:  “Guns Save Lives–Gun Laws Ruin Them.”

“December 10, 2007:  at approximately 12:30 A.M., twenty-two-year-old Mathew Murray walked into the Youth with a Mission Center in Arvada, Colorado, looking for overnight shelter.  After his request was denied, he pulled a pistol and fatally shot 26-year-old Tiffany Johnson and 24-year-old Phillip Crouse.  Murray fled the scene bathed in the blood of the innocent.

Armed with two handguns and a high-powered rifle, he left en route to the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He arrived at the destination at 1:10 P.M., where two sisters stood in the parking lot: Rachael and Stephanie Works, sixteen and eighteen-years-old, respectively. He shot and killed both girls with the high-powered rifle, before he entered the church with all three guns. [The murderer and his victims were white.]

Jeanne Assam was a volunteer security guard at the church. She challenged Murray to drop his weapon and shot him when he refused to comply, though, not fatally. He used his own gun to end his life.

December 11, 2007:  CNN News reported that Murray had had 1,000-rounds of ammunition in his vehicle.

If he had so much ammunition, he apparently intended on killing a lot of people. It was fortunate for the church members that Ms. Assam sat in the pews armed with her handgun. Some state laws, such as those in South Carolina, prohibit guns in a church. Ms. Assam could have been prosecuted for having the gun she used to save the masses who sat in church. According to KUSA-TV in Denver, Colorado, Murray posted the following message on a Web site between the two shooting incidents in Arvada and Colorado Springs: ‘All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you … as I can [sic] especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world.’  (See www.foxnews.com – Colorado Church Gunman Sought Revenge After He Was Kicked Out )”

[Due to my lack of Internet access, I cannot check to see if that link is still active, but the words I wrote seven years ago about the South Carolina laws stand true. None of the victims could have lawfully possessed a gun while in the Mother Emanuel AME Bible Study. If someone in the group had had one, then perhaps nine people would not have lost their lives.]

“The outcome of the above event supports the need for gun ownership by responsible individuals who are trained in their safe usage. The other side of the equation is that without the guns, Murray could not have murdered his victims, which is partially true. He could have killed with knives or fire [such as what happened to four little girls in 1963 when racists burned a church in Birmingham, Alabama], but that does not mean that knives and matches should be outlawed by legislators, though there are some who would probably support such insane legislation.”  [“Guns Save Lives-Gun Laws Ruin Them,” Wayne T. Dowdy, 2008]

My father was a Christian who had said he wanted to die in the House of the Lord. Years later he got his wish when he died in the parking lot of his church at an Easter Revival. Perhaps the victims at the Mother Emanuel AME Church, and other people who have died while at their place of worship, wished for the same thing and found peace after those tragedies.

Mother Emanuel AME Church members gathered on the following Sunday and held their regular services, paying tribute to their members who died at the hands of evil in their place of worship.

EVIL: Murray and Roof both killed because of their hate for a certain class of people different from themselves. ISIS, the terror group known for beheading its enemies, kills for the same reason. Evil knows no color. Evil is blind to all but the hate and rage that flourishes within the mind and body where it resides.

Most of those who kill others because of something other than self-defense (ethnic background, religious views, political affiliations, moral beliefs and values, geographical areas, etc.), probably do so because they see the others as evil or someone less than themselves, who does not deserve to live. True evil lies in their mirror.

When evil lurks within the mind of someone, it will always find a reason to come out to destroy life or cause injury, regardless of any other factor. Evil does not need justification.

Evil thrives on pain and misery and inflicts it upon everyone near. It is a poison that ruins lives, regardless of age, race, sex, sexuality identity, or color. The use of guns is only one mechanism for its delivery.

The shooter stated that he had second thoughts about following through with his plan because of the kindness the people had shown him. On that day, evil won when he decided to follow through with his plan and pulled the trigger. Good people died. I wish the good in Roof had won so no one had to lose their life. It wasn’t race that caused those people to die. It was the evil in Roof’s mind that used skin color as an excuse to steal lives.

LOVE: Love won on Sunday when visitors and members of the Mother Emanuel AME Church sang songs of praise to honor those who died in a battle of love versus evil. People gathered to rejoice, rather than to mourn, even though some wept and struggled with their anger. Many parishioners prayed for God to forgive the shooter and to allow everyone to heal as tears flowed. Love suffers loss. Love heals. Love forgives. Love will overpower evil in the end, regardless of the complexion of a person’s skin.

Visit StraightFromthePen.com for my other writings.  Feel free to contact me at waynedowdy@straightfromthepen.com or at the snail mail address listed on the website.

______________________________

* In “The Search for Enlightenment,” I wrote about my struggle and periodic failure to live without resorting to violence or the threat of violence to resolve issues. Each day I focus on doing the right thing so I can live in harmony with the Universe. If a predator targets me, which rarely happens, I may struggle to let love overpower the evil instincts I learned based upon my life experiences, but no matter what, I do try to be the man God created me to be.

SOUTH AFRICAN ATROCITIES & A CHURCH SHOOTER

Current Affairs, Politics, , , , , , , , , ,

By Wayne T. Dowdy

WARNING: This blog contains graphic images of violence and disturbing contents that some may find offensive.

NO SAFE HAVENS:  I could not figure out what drove a young white male to walk into a Bible study at the Emanuel African-Methodist-Episcopalian Church, in Charleston, South Carolina, sit with nine African-American members for an hour, and then pull a handgun to shoot each of them multiple times.  I searched for the “Why” he committed a horrendous crime. I have an idea about what motivated him; it arrived in an email I received on December 7, 2013.

CHARLESTON CHURCH MURDERS:  Hearing about the June 17, 2015, murders of nine innocent people at the Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church troubled me.  What drove a person to act so inhumane toward other human beings?  Are not churches and places of worship supposed to be safe and sacred places?  I concluded that evil has no boundary.

(Read my June 2015 blog post, “Love and Evil Are Color-Blind” for more information on the crime and victims of the Charleston Church Murders.)

My access to information on current events is limited to what I see and hear on television news channels; read in books, and an occasional newspaper, because I cannot access the Internet. My mind works full-time to understand what goes on in the world I am so far removed from by me living inside a prison cell.  The news I am fed is censored by reporters and news agencies; however, a college educated friend sent me some information a long time ago that may help explain why Dylann Roof killed three men and six women, most of them elderly and defenseless.

Things I heard and read on the News about an online manifesto by the shooter made me wonder whether a correlation existed between his crimes on American soil and events on another continent: Africa.

WHY DID HE DO IT?  Roof referenced to people talking about it on the Internet but not doing anything about “it” (Negroes committing atrocities against white people), and then nominated himself to commit the horrific crimes he confessed to doing when arrested.

One clue as to why he may have done it concerns a flag from South Africa (SA).  As reported on various news agencies, a social media photo showed him waving a Confederate flag, while wearing a jacket with the flag of Apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).  SA and Rhodesia were once ruled by white minorities.

Dylann-Roof-Confederate-FlagHim waving the Confederate flag lead to it being removed from several places.  South Carolina officials took down the flag that had flown at the State House since 1961 to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the Civil War that began in Charleston on April 12, 1861.  I do not know of anyone mentioning a correlation between the foreign flag emblems he wore on his jacket and the murders.  I did hear a news report that mentioned “The Last Rhodesian” during coverage of the event.

My mind went into overdrive thinking about the Charleston Church Murders and those flags.  I searched its memory bank until I got a hit.  I remembered an email a friend had sent me in 2013 about the genocide of whites in SA.  To me, the content of the email connects the church murders and atrocities in South Africa.  This is how I believe the two correlate:

EMAIL ON DEATH OF NELSON MANDELA:  I sent out this email to everyone on my contact list on December 5, 2013:

SUBJECT:  Nelson Mandela Made the World a Better Place

On this fifth day of December 2013, the world lost a truly unique person who set an example that should have inspired everyone, even those who may have hated him because of the color of his skin, or envied him because he rose from a place of destitution to become a leader.  He was one of a kind, a very special person sent by God to do the impossible.  He was a man of strong resolve who not only survived prison and refused to allow it to make him a cruel and mean person; he rose to conquer those who had put him in prison and then ruled a nation with love, dignity, and honor.  He proved what one person can do.  He made the world a better place by showing how much a person with determination and ambition can accomplish.  He did what most would have said to be an impossible task:  rise from prisoner to ruler-a good ruler-one who did not abuse his power as most people in his situation would have done.  He left behind shoes that may take a millennium for another to come along who can fill them.  May God be with his family and loved ones as they grieve his loss and celebrate the legacy he left behind.

RESPONSE FROM A FRIEND ON NELSON MANDELA

December 7, 2013

“[T]here is some disturbing truth I felt compelled to share with you about the Mandela the media would have no one to know.  You don’t have access to uncensored Internet or International media sites but the truth of South Africa is horrifying.  I have been pen pals with men and women from SA for a long time and their country is collapsing with atrocities against white people that haven’t been seen before.  I can send you foreign articles and photos that I will send to your gmail account if you are able to access that.”

[I cannot access my email accounts due to the modified email system that I use through Corrlinks.com, which strips photos, symbols, and any formatting from messages sent to me.  Approved people send me information from email accounts through Corrlinks.]

“I had a girlfriend in 1990 from SA whose family fled before the Clinton Administration put its 7th fleet off their coast and embargoed them into handing over the country to the African National Congress (ANC).  There is a systematic genocide that has been taking place against the Boer farmers.  The Boers are of German-Dutch ancestry and colonized that part of the continent whose countries and territories have changed names over the years depending on the different regimes.  Bands of black men invade their homes where they have a pattern of systematically torturing, raping and killing the women, babies and children in front of the men before they torture and kill them.  I have been sent the crime scene photos of burnt babies snatched from their mother’s arms and set alight in front of them.  I have the photos of people’s bodies who were murdered with machetes and those who have still survived with wounds from machetes.

“The machete is their favorite weapon.  There is a memorial hill called Plaasmoorde which is the Afrikaans word for ‘farm murders.’  It is really a small mountain where the entire side is in the shape of a white cross made from hundreds of individual white crosses.  The idea is that the blacks will take the land or just terrorize the white people off it, not realizing they feed the country.

“Nelson Mandela was a militant terrorist and leader of the ANC in the 1960s and that is why he was imprisoned.  When the country was handed over to him he unleashed his retribution squads behind his grandfatherly smile and eventually gave the Presidency to Jacob Zuma who was the youth leader of the ANC and is nothing more than a warlord.

“Mandela’s first wife ‘Winnie’ is known for her necklace punishment.  That is where a tire tube filled with gas is put around the neck of someone with their hands tied and then set on fire.

“The black politicians consult witch doctors to make decisions and SA is the rape and AIDS capital of the world.  Something else that is beyond imagination is the belief that exists down there among many blacks is that they think they can cure themselves of AIDS if they rape a virgin.  Child rape is astronomical and social workers have even passed out devices that fit into vaginas that can be removed but have barbs on the inside that have to be medically removed from an inserted penis.  It doesn’t stop the rape but doesn’t make it enjoyable.  Of course, once word got out then they just told women to take it out if she had one or get her throat cut.

“My pen pals give me updates every morning on the savage violence that media can’t get out of the country and that the U.S., Canada and Australia won’t air.  There is a growing movement to get this censored genocide out and recently a world wide Internet petition and marches were held called ‘Red October’ to bring awareness.  Human Genocide Watch has begged the United Nations to do something but the sad reality is it just isn’t politically correct to bring attention to the fact that this is a black on white thing.  That would make all of the countries who pressured SA to end Apartheid look really bad for endorsing mass rape, torture and murder of the SA white people who make up only 8% of the population and are by far the smallest ethnic minority.  The ANC passed a law called BEE which means Black Employment Empowerment where whites are kept from getting jobs and are driven into poverty.  Many neighborhoods have been turned into squatter camps.  The people I message with and I have a deal where if I don’t hear from them after three days, it means they are most likely dead.  There have been two in the last three months I no longer hear from.  All of the police are black so you can imagine.  BMW and Range Rover will no longer insure their vehicles in their country.  I guess it will all come out eventually.  Probably when the world can no longer help but ask the question, ‘Hey, what happened to all dem white folks down there?’  It really is sad.

“Well, enough of all that depressing stuff.  Just shows the powerful psychology of government controlled media. …..”

The above information altered my perception of Nelson Mandela.  I still respected him for what he accomplished in his life, even though I found the SA events repulsive.  I imagine Roof operated on similar information about the SA atrocities with the Boer farmers, in order to justify murdering those at the Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church.  That is how I feel the South Africa atrocities were associated with the Charleston Church Murders.

Additionally, as written in “Love and Evil Are Color-Blind,” the torture and murders of a white couple, their young son and and a maid in a Washington, D.C. mansion, “may have fueled his hate and rage toward blacks.”

CONCLUSION:  No one knows what really causes people to go out and commit mass murders, other than their inherently evil nature, maybe.  I’m sure reasons vary from psychopath to psychopath.  If my suspicions about why Roof murdered the people at the church is correct, I fail to understand the logic behind killing a group of people in one country for the actions of people in another country.  Then again, I do not understand murdering innocent people under any circumstance.  That includes dropping bombs from the sky because of political reasons, whether it be to obtain natural resources or strategic positions to battle one’s enemies.

Apache helos CONFESSION:  I confess that if had the military capacity to hunt down the bands of men who go on killing sprees in Africa with their machetes, I would not hesitate to use Apache helicopters and other military weapons and machinery to obliterate them.  I’d do the same to any group of people committing crimes in the name of ethnic cleansing, who display ruthless acts of cruelty, as has happened in Bosnia, Serbia, Iraq, Sudan, Darfur, and other parts of Africa, Asia, and Europe.  That may not make it right but it would get the point across and eliminate those who turned from human to animal.

How can humans eliminate evil minds without becoming evil themselves?   I believe that is a paradox of human existence, and of the struggle to live a righteous life and survive in a dog-eat-dog, hostile world.

waynedowdy@straightfromthepen.com