For members of Mother Emanuel, Buffalo shooting stirs painful memories

— A few days ago, at three o’clock in the morning, Rev. Eric Manning found himself thinking about how last weekend’s massacre in Buffalo mirrored the one at his church.A young man, a self-described white supremacist, armed with a gun, drove miles out of his way to seek out and kill Black people.In June 2015, nine Black men and women, members of historic Mother Emmanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston were murdered in June 2015 by a White man, then 21 years old, who had prayed with him during their Wednesday night Bible study.Last Saturday afternoon, ten Black men and women were shot to death at a neighborhood supermarket. The document also references Dylann Roof, later convicted of killing the Black men and women in the church basement, who talked of starting a “race war.”“In June, it’ll be seven years since the massacre at Mother Emanuel,” Manning, who became pastor of the church one year and five days after the attack, said during a recent interview. He couldn’t imagine that a Black man could emerge from an active shooting scene, still armed, and not be shot dead by police.“There are two forms of justice, one that will given for Black and brown citizens and one that is given to Whites,” Manning said at the church.Glee interjected, “There are two forms of justice, justice and injustice. There are still things that spook us as a result of this,” said Lois Gethers, 77, who had gone with Glee to the restaurant that night in 2015.“A lot of Roof’s followers are trying to continue what he started,” Jones said, referring to the threats the church still receives. “When I was a young man I thought, by the time I became an old man, most of this stuff would have gone away,” said Glee.