People visit a makeshift memorial near the Emanuel AME Church on June 18, 2015, in Charleston, S.C., after a mass shooting at the church the day before.(Photo: Brendan Smialowski, AFP/Getty Images)
Down the street from the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, where police say a white man killed nine African Americans on Wednesday night, stands an 80-foot statue of John Calhoun, the former vice president and fierce defender of slavery.
Slavery may be abolished, but some Charleston residents say white supremacy is not.
"We're not just dealing with a random person that decided to go crazy," said Muhiyidin d'Baha, an organizer with Black Lives Matter Charleston. "We're dealing with a deep racist, white supremacist, confederate ideology."
On Wednesday night, police say Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old from Lexington, S.C., gunned down nine people in the Emanuel AME Church. Witnesses have told media outlets that Roof told the people in the church, "You rape our women and you're taking over our country. And you have to go."
The Justice Department has opened a hate crime investigation into the shooting.
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D'Baha said racist ideology is pervasive in Charleston, using the continued segregation of Charleston schools as an example.
"We have a billion dollar tourism industry in which people come down to Charleston, S.C., to learn the stories of colonial times, and so much of the compelling stories and tours feature the Gullah Geechee (the native African ethnic group) suffering under white supremacy," he said.
The mass shooting comes only two months after Michael Slager, a white police officer, fatally shot Walter Scott, an unarmed black man, in North Charleston, S.C. Slager shot Scott after he fled a traffic stop. A grand jury indicted Slager in June on a murder charge in connection with the shooting death.
"We haven't even gone through the grieving steps for the killing of Walter Scott," said Denise Cromwell, a community activist in Charleston.
Cromwell said the killings have put race relations on "high alert."
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Charleston, a city of 120,000 people, is 68% white and 25% black, according to the 2010 Census. The city is wealthy but divided, said Malik Shabazz, the national president of Black Lawyers for Justice. Shabazz has been working with Charleston residents on issues of racism and police violence in the aftermath of Scott's death.
"It is a city where the white is on the top and black is on the bottom," he said. "It's a modern day Jim Crow."
Shabazz said black residents of Charleston have told him racism is "persistent and prevalent."
"They are telling me that as tragic as this massacre is that it's not altogether a surprise," he said.
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Members of the North Charleston Civil Coalition for Reform, a consortium of organizations working to change the city government in the aftermath of Scott's death, are scheduled to present proposals to end racial profiling and improve policing at a North Charleston public safety meeting Thursday night.
The group is still planning to share their recommendations and then go to the church and mourn with the Charleston community, said Kwadjo Campbell, a former Charleston councilmember who represented the district that included the Emanuel AME Church and has consulted with the coalition.
Campbell, who also ran for Charleston mayor in 2003, said much of the racial tension in Charleston stems from the death of Scott.
"We as a country have to really deal with the racial tension that has escalated since (Barack) Obama became president," he said. "We can't act like this doesn't exist and I believe that's what we have done as an American society."
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