A lawyer for the victims, Bakari Sellers, said the figure was particularly meaningful because the number 88 is significant among white supremacists like gunman Dylann Roof, who was convicted on federal hate crimes charges and sentenced to death.
Photos of Roof before the shooting show him wearing a shirt with the number 88. He also brought 88 bullets with him to Mother Emanuel AME Church the day of the 2015 massacre. White supremacists use 88 as a code for “Heil Hitler,” because “H” is the eighth letter of the alphabet.
Roof killed nine people attending Bible study at Mother Emanuel, in Charleston, S.C., and later told investigators he wanted to start a race war.
Eliana Pinckney, who was just 11 years old when her father, Rev. Clementa Pinckney, was killed in the shooting, spoke Thursday morning outside Justice Department headquarters, where the agreement in principle was reached.
“They can’t bring my father back, that’s never going to happen, but they’re doing whatever they can to acknowledge the fact that this hurts,” she said. “ . . . To see the government acknowledge the fact that racism still exists, and how prevalent it is in our community, and then actively try to combat it in every way that they can, and to acknowledge that gun violence is an issue and to do everything they can to correct a mistake . . . is so important.”
After the shooting, the then-director of the FBI, James B. Comey, said errors in the background check process had allowed Roof to buy the weapon, when he should have been rejected. Comey said the case “rips all of our hearts out.”
At the time, federal officials said the breakdown was a result of errors not only by the FBI but also apparently by local law enforcement.
Months before the shooting, Roof had been arrested for possession of narcotics, a charge that on its own did not disqualify him from buying a gun. But Roof’s subsequent admissions to police about drug use would have triggered an automatic rejection of his gun purchase if the information had been found during the background check.
An FBI examiner assigned to review Roof’s purchase never saw his confession, in large part because the background check records did not accurately reflect the specific local police department that arrested him, and the examiner ended up contacting the wrong department.
Unable to find a copy of Roof’s arrest report, the person doing the background check did not block the purchase, officials have said.
A district court judge initially ruled that the victim families did not have legal grounds to sue the government for those failures, but that finding was overturned by a federal appeals court.
Under the settlement terms agreed to Thursday, the payments will be split among relatives of the dead and those wounded in the shooting, with the families of those killed getting $6 million to $7.5 million per claimant, and survivors getting $5 million.
The agreement must still be finalized in court.
The FBI did not admit fault as part of the settlement, but said in a statement: “We in the FBI, like everyone in the country, were horrified by the senseless act of violence and today we continue to grieve with the families whose pain remains fresh from this unspeakable tragedy that took place more than six years ago.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that since the day of the church shooting, the Justice Department “has sought to bring justice to the community, first by a successful hate crime prosecution and today by settling civil claims.”
After his arrest, Roof confessed to the shooting, laughing at times as he recounted what he did. He later wrote in a jailhouse journal: “I would like to make it crystal clear, I do not regret what I did. . . . I am not sorry. I have not shed a tear for the innocent people I killed.”
—from The Washington Post article "Charleston church shooting victims strike $88 million settlement with Justice Dept". written by Devlin Barrett, published 10/28/21.
10/28/21: Charleston church shooting victims strike $88 million settlement with Justice Dept. 6/20/12: "Mother Emanuel" A.M.E. Church History. "Mother Emanuel" A.M.E.
Church History The history of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church reflects the development of religious institutions for African Americans in Charleston. 1/5/15: Charleston's Emancipation Day Parade has long and colorful history. As far back as many black families can recall, the annual Emancipation Day Parade in Charleston has been a chance to remember the history of the struggle for freedom and to wish each other a happy new year.
Thursday was a good day for it, with sunny skies and temperatures in the 50s. Several dozen families sat or stood at King and Columbus streets to cheer those in the parade. 6/17/15: 9 dead in Charleston church massacre. 6/18/15: The Charleston Massacre and the Cunning of White Supremacy. According to Matt Ford at The Atlantic, the Charleston, South Carolina, church where a white gunman murdered nine people was The oldest black church south of Baltimore, and one of the most storied black congregations in the United States, Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church’s history is deeply intertwined with the history of African American life in Charleston.
Among the congregation’s founders was Denmark Vesey, a former slave who was executed in 1822 for attempting to organize a massive slave revolt in antebellum South Carolina. White South Carolinians burned the church to the ground in response to the thwarted uprising; along with other black churches, it was shuttered by the city in 1834. 6/18/15: Killings add painful page to storied history of Charleston church. CHARLESTON, S.C. - The Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church is one of the oldest, most storied black churches in the South.
Its congregation met in secret in the years when black churches were outlawed here before the Civil War, and the church contains a shrine to one of its founders, who helped organize a slave revolt in 1822. So the mass shooting that took the lives of nine churchgoers, including a state senator who was pastor, Clementa C. 6/18/15: The Long, Troubled History of Charleston's Emanuel AME Church. Charleston bills itself as “America’s most historic city,” and the tragic massacre that took place yesterday at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church is merely the latest episode in a long saga of violence waged against that particular congregation and its leadership.
Although the motives of alleged shooter Dylann Roof are only beginning to emerge, the initial details suggest that yesterday’s events are part of a story that began in 1817, when the church was first founded. From its founding until 1855, South Carolina was home to a black majority. As a result, its slave code was the most draconian on the English mainland. City officials monitored every aspect and moment of the lives of blacks in their community, and white ministers played their part. Many owned enslaved domestics, and one assured his mixed-race congregation that the Bible pronounced it “contrary to God’s will to run away or to harbor a runaway.” 6/19/15: Charleston's storied 'Mother Emanuel' grieves loss of gifted pastor-politician. MIAMI – Two months before the Rev.
Clementa Pinckney was gunned down during a Bible study at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, he stood before state lawmakers seamlessly blending his faith and politics in urging them to pass a law to protect his community. In this case, he was citing scripture in asking fellow South Carolina lawmakers to support equipping police with body cameras following the fatal police shooting of Walter Scott, a black man killed as he fled a traffic stop. Pinckney’s adeptness in persuading lawmakers to support the bill would be among the final political successes for the gifted pastor-politician, who was gunned down at age 41 along with eight others at his church, Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal, on Wednesday night. Nicknamed “Mother Emanuel,” the Gothic Revival-style brick house of worship is the oldest A.M.E. church in the Southeastern United States, with a storied history dating back to slavery.
“He was a giant,” said state Sen. 6/19/15: These Are The Victims Of The Charleston Church Shooting. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton Courtesy of Singleton's brother, Mark Tony Jones Coleman-Singleton singing in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Jeffrey Collins / AP Photo A picture of Sharonda Coleman-Singleton sits on a large paper signed by students, teachers and friends in Goose Creek . In addition to her work with the high school, Coleman-Singleton was a reverend at Emanuel AME Church, according to their website. 6/20/15: From Ferguson to Charleston and Beyond, Anguish About Race Keeps Building. Yet in many ways, the situation of black America is dire.
“All of these examples in some ways are really misleading in what they represent,” Mr. Stevenson said. “We have an African-American president who cannot talk about race, who is exposed to hostility anytime he talks about race. These little manifestations of black artistry and athleticism and excellence have always existed. 1/5/17: Jailhouse journal shows Roof was annoyed at portrayal, not remorseful weeks after shooting. CHARLESTON, S.C.
(WCIV) — Dylann Roof spent the early weeks in his jail cell writing about his beliefs and calling on like-minded people to move forward with more acts of violence against what he called "lesser races. " "I did what I thought would make the biggest wave. And now the fate of our race sits in the hands of my brothers who continue to live freely," he wrote.
"Unless we (white people) take real, possibly violent, action, we have no future, literally. "