Charleston Church Shooting Survivor Speaks Up

Jennifer Pinckney. Image via Megan Mendenhall/Duke University/RNS

The first lady of Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church offered two enduring images: her late husband’s smiling face lying in a casket, and the bullet holes that riddled the church walls when she went to clean out his office a week later. “Clementa was a peaceful person,” said Jennifer Pinckney, the widow of the late preacher and South Carolina state senator Clementa Pinckney, during a visit to Duke University to talk about gun control, race, and faith.

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An image of the November 2026 issue of Sojourners, titled "Face to Face." It features George Lakey on the cover
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