| FZ-261349-18 | Research Programs: Public Scholars | Kevin Sack | Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina: 200 Years of African-American Life | 1/1/2019 - 12/31/2019 | $60,000.00 | Kevin | | Sack | | | | | Greensboro | GA | 30642-4443 | USA | 2018 | African American History | Public Scholars | Research Programs | 60000 | 0 | 60000 | 0 | Writing a history of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
I'm writing a book for Crown Publishing about the remarkable story of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., site of one of the nation's most horrific hate crimes. On a Wednesday night in June 2015, a 21-year-old white supremacist, Dylann Roof, murdered nine Bible study worshipers in the church fellowship hall with the delusion of inciting a race war. He had picked his target, the oldest A.M.E. church in the South, for maximum impact. Through extensive interviews and archival research, I plan to trace the church's history from its founding around 1818 in a bold breakaway from white churches to its central place in the second term of the first black president. The book's conceit is to examine two centuries of African-American life as an ongoing narrative that unfolds within a single congregation. Its ambition is to be an enduring case study, both scholarly and accessible, of the black church's role in resisting oppression at every stage of the freedom struggle. |