Charleston Shooting Survivor Carrying on Slain Husband's Dreams

At the Charleston panel Tuesday, Eboni Marshall Turman, Chris Vaughn, Jennifer Pinckney and Kylon Middleton. Photo by Les Todd

Since the shooting, Jennifer Pinckney has rarely been alone.

Wrapped in the embrace of a protective community, Pinckney is moving forward day by day, raising two young girls on her own as she continues to process the horror that visited her Charleston, S.C., church last summer.

Pinckney was present when a gunman began shooting at the Mother Emanuel AME Church and didn’t stop until nine people, including Pinckney’s husband, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, were dead.

“We’re in the process of trying to heal,” Pinckney said Tuesday during a daylong visit to Duke. “We’re all still torn up by it. There’s not a day that goes by that our daughters don’t think of their father.”

In a steady, measured voice, Pinckney spoke plainly during a news conference and later as a featured guest at a Franklin Humanities Institute forum on faith and race that drew more than 1,000 attendees at Page Auditorium. She was joined at both by the Rev. Kylon Middleton and the Rev. Chris Vaughn, Charleston-area church pastors who were friends of Clementa Pinckney.

She spoke at length about her husband, a state senator who believed strongly in public service and education. She spoke with pride about her daughters, Eliana, 11, the daddy’s girl who clung to his every word, and Malana, 6, the feisty one unafraid to speak her mind.

During the shooting, Malana was with her mother in the basement of the church in a room adjacent to where the attack occurred.

“She too is a survivor,” Jennifer Pinckney said Tuesday evening. “She was there. She heard everything that was going on with that moment. She asked me: ‘Mama, is daddy going to die?’ ”

Pinckney’s news conference and the evening forum – moderated by Duke professor Eboni Marshall Turman – also examined the role of black churches and their leaders both within their communities and more broadly. Middleton, a Charleston native with advanced degrees from both UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke, gave several passionate pleas for churches to be active in public policy debates on issues such as poverty and gun control.

“As a church, we cannot become an obsolete social club,” he said. “We have a responsibility not to be mute on these issues.”

The trio came to campus at the invitation of Duke’s Franklin Humanities Institute. Pam Montgomery, the FHI assistant director of administration, is Rev. Vaughn’s cousin and had a long familiarity with both Clementa Pinckney and the Mother Emanuel AME church. Middleton has local ties here as well, having received his master of theology and doctor of philosophy degrees at Duke. He was also a teacher and administrator in the Durham and Chapel Hill-Carrboro school systems prior to taking leadership of his church in Charleston.

Vaughn and Middleton are part of Pinckney’s “protective cloak.” They appear with her at public events and play a middleman role when a court hearing or other legal matter arises that requires Jennifer Pinckney’s attention.

“My husband had a great group of friends,” she said. “They have literally just wrapped their arms around me. Anytime I have to go to any event, one of them is there. They really try to shield me and protect me and the girls.”

A South Carolina man, Dylann Roof, has been charged with the murders. His name was never publicly mentioned Tuesday. Jennifer Pinckney doesn’t plan to spend each day at his trial, waiting for justice.

“I never let my girls see me cry. I always want them to be happy,” she said near the close of the public forum. “I want them to talk about dad. I want them to live a full life. It is up to me – with the help of good friends – to help carry on the dreams that Clementa and I had for Eliana and Malana. God is going to be with us. God is going to carry us through.”

The event, “Reflections on Charleston: A Conversation on Faith and Race,” can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vZ0jdVmgNU. More information on the foundation set up in the name of Clementa Pinckney is available at http://senatorpinckney.org/.