Charleston is a microcosm of how the history of slavery intertwines with the history of America

On June 17th, nine African-American members of a Bible study class in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina were shot dead by an alleged white supremacist. David Wise charts the links between one of the victims, Pastor Clementa Pinckney, and the revolutionary era slave-owner Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, who helped write the Constitution’s Fugitive Slave Clause, which was cited in South Carolina’s resolution of secession which helped lead to the Civil War. He writes that the shooting is the most recent chapter in the afterhistory of the Civil War.