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Mother Emanuel

Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church

Author Kevin Sack
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On sale Jun 03, 2025 | 15 Hours and 0 Minutes | 9798217078189
Grades 9-12 + AP/IB
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A sweeping history of one of the nation’s most important African American churches and a profound story of courage and grace amid the fight for racial justice—from Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Kevin Sack

Few people beyond South Carolina’s Lowcountry knew of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston—Mother Emanuel—before the night of June 17, 2015, when a twenty-one-year-old white supremacist walked into Bible study and slaughtered the church’s charismatic pastor and eight worshippers. Although the shooter had targeted the first AME church in the South in order to agitate racial strife, he did not anticipate the aftermath—an outpouring of forgiveness from the victims’ families and a reckoning with the divisions of caste that have afflicted Charleston and the South since the earliest days of European settlement.

Mother Emanuel explores the fascinating history that brought the church to that moment, and the depth of the desecration committed in its fellowship hall. It reveals how African Methodism was cultivated from the harshest American soil and how Black suffering shaped forgiveness into both a religious practice and a survival tool. Kevin Sack, who has written about race in his native South for more than four decades, uses the church to trace the long arc of Black life in the city where nearly half of enslaved Africans disembarked in North America and where the Civil War began. Through the microcosm of one congregation, he explores the development of a unique practice of Christianity, from its daring breakaway from white churches in 1817, through the traumas of Civil War and Reconstruction, to its critical role in the Civil Rights Movement and beyond. We meet unsung heroes, including Denmark Vesey, the former slave whose aborted rebellion plot led to his hanging and the destruction of the original church; Rev. Richard Harvey Cain, Emanuel’s first pastor after the Civil War, who also won election to Congress during Reconstruction; Rev. Benjamin J. Glover, who served simultaneously as pastor and a crusading NAACP leader during the 1960s; and Rev. Clementa Pinckney, a respected state legislator, whose 2015 murder inspired President Barack Obama’s memorable “Amazing Grace” eulogy.

At its core, Mother Emanuel is an epic tale of perseverance, not just of a congregation but of a people who withstood enslavement and Jim Crow and all manner of violence with an unbending faith.
“All at once Kevin Sack’s Mother Emanuel is harrowing, despairing and inspiring. From a moment-by-moment account of the evening of the massacre to a final, brilliant discussion of the meaning of forgiveness in Christianity and other traditions, Sack writes lyrically, from deep research, and with an unforgettable message about tragedy and resilience not only in that horrible summer of 2015 but over 200 years of this famous church. . . . Mother Emanuel still lives, perhaps stronger than ever on Calhoun Street, an institution no variation on the Confederacy can ever kill.”—David W. Blight, Pulitzer prize-winning author of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom

“Mother Emanuel begins as the tale of a vicious crime and a forgiving church but turns into an epic story of Black life and becoming that spans two hundred years. Beautifully written, a marvel of research, the book is set in one of the old corners of the South, peopled with a hundred personalities and filled with as many subplots. Kevin Sack renders a portrait of Black Americans in every generation since the Revolution. Big in historical scale but granular in personal detail, Mother Emanuel transcends the church of its title and the crime that made it famous. It feels like a monument to Black America that takes the form of a book.”—Edward Ball, National Book Award winning author of Slaves in the Family and author of Life of a Klansman

“This book shook me with its power and beauty. Kevin Sack tells the story of a moment of racial terror that turned into an opportunity for grace—and from that terrible story produces an insightful and inspiring work of history. Mother Emanuel is a book of enormous ambition, meticulously researched, gorgeously written, and deeply fulfilling.”—Jonathan Eig, Pulitzer prize-winning author of King: A Life

“Mother Emanuel is more than an account of an historic church in Charleston and a horrific day on June 17, 2015. In Kevin Sack’s hands, Dylan Roof’s callous murder of nine people during Bible study opens a window into the power of the Black Church in an historic city in the American South. Race, religion, and terror combine for an extraordinary story of America, the resilience of a people, and their capacity to forgive in order to live with unimaginable grief. A powerful book—especially for times such as these.”—Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., bestselling author of Begin Again

“In Mother Emanuel, Kevin Sack offers a deeply researched, eloquent page-turner, taking us from colonization and the African slave trade to modern times. Along the way, we feel the myriad ways the past still weighs on us, and we meet visionaries inspired by a more generous Bible, and a more democratic America, than the ones they inherited.”—Melissa Fay Greene, author of Praying for Sheetrock and The Temple Bombing

“A gracefully written book about one church and the tragic death of nine martyrs, which also narrates a critical history of enslavement, the search for freedom, and the hatreds that are animated with each new generation. Few accounts of racism and violence in the United States provide such rich and sensitive narrative about how much we all suffer as a result of the nation’s original sins. Breathtaking and beautiful!”—Marcia Chatelain, author of Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America
© Alan S. Weiner
Kevin Sack is a veteran journalist who has written broadly about national affairs for more than four decades and has shared in three Pulitzer Prizes. A native of Jacksonville, Florida, and a graduate of Duke University, he spent thirty years on the staff of The New York Times, where he specialized in writing longform narrative and investigative reports, often related to race. He also has written for the Los Angeles Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and his work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine. He was a 2019 Emerson Collective Fellow at New America. View titles by Kevin Sack

About

A sweeping history of one of the nation’s most important African American churches and a profound story of courage and grace amid the fight for racial justice—from Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Kevin Sack

Few people beyond South Carolina’s Lowcountry knew of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston—Mother Emanuel—before the night of June 17, 2015, when a twenty-one-year-old white supremacist walked into Bible study and slaughtered the church’s charismatic pastor and eight worshippers. Although the shooter had targeted the first AME church in the South in order to agitate racial strife, he did not anticipate the aftermath—an outpouring of forgiveness from the victims’ families and a reckoning with the divisions of caste that have afflicted Charleston and the South since the earliest days of European settlement.

Mother Emanuel explores the fascinating history that brought the church to that moment, and the depth of the desecration committed in its fellowship hall. It reveals how African Methodism was cultivated from the harshest American soil and how Black suffering shaped forgiveness into both a religious practice and a survival tool. Kevin Sack, who has written about race in his native South for more than four decades, uses the church to trace the long arc of Black life in the city where nearly half of enslaved Africans disembarked in North America and where the Civil War began. Through the microcosm of one congregation, he explores the development of a unique practice of Christianity, from its daring breakaway from white churches in 1817, through the traumas of Civil War and Reconstruction, to its critical role in the Civil Rights Movement and beyond. We meet unsung heroes, including Denmark Vesey, the former slave whose aborted rebellion plot led to his hanging and the destruction of the original church; Rev. Richard Harvey Cain, Emanuel’s first pastor after the Civil War, who also won election to Congress during Reconstruction; Rev. Benjamin J. Glover, who served simultaneously as pastor and a crusading NAACP leader during the 1960s; and Rev. Clementa Pinckney, a respected state legislator, whose 2015 murder inspired President Barack Obama’s memorable “Amazing Grace” eulogy.

At its core, Mother Emanuel is an epic tale of perseverance, not just of a congregation but of a people who withstood enslavement and Jim Crow and all manner of violence with an unbending faith.

Reviews

“All at once Kevin Sack’s Mother Emanuel is harrowing, despairing and inspiring. From a moment-by-moment account of the evening of the massacre to a final, brilliant discussion of the meaning of forgiveness in Christianity and other traditions, Sack writes lyrically, from deep research, and with an unforgettable message about tragedy and resilience not only in that horrible summer of 2015 but over 200 years of this famous church. . . . Mother Emanuel still lives, perhaps stronger than ever on Calhoun Street, an institution no variation on the Confederacy can ever kill.”—David W. Blight, Pulitzer prize-winning author of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom

“Mother Emanuel begins as the tale of a vicious crime and a forgiving church but turns into an epic story of Black life and becoming that spans two hundred years. Beautifully written, a marvel of research, the book is set in one of the old corners of the South, peopled with a hundred personalities and filled with as many subplots. Kevin Sack renders a portrait of Black Americans in every generation since the Revolution. Big in historical scale but granular in personal detail, Mother Emanuel transcends the church of its title and the crime that made it famous. It feels like a monument to Black America that takes the form of a book.”—Edward Ball, National Book Award winning author of Slaves in the Family and author of Life of a Klansman

“This book shook me with its power and beauty. Kevin Sack tells the story of a moment of racial terror that turned into an opportunity for grace—and from that terrible story produces an insightful and inspiring work of history. Mother Emanuel is a book of enormous ambition, meticulously researched, gorgeously written, and deeply fulfilling.”—Jonathan Eig, Pulitzer prize-winning author of King: A Life

“Mother Emanuel is more than an account of an historic church in Charleston and a horrific day on June 17, 2015. In Kevin Sack’s hands, Dylan Roof’s callous murder of nine people during Bible study opens a window into the power of the Black Church in an historic city in the American South. Race, religion, and terror combine for an extraordinary story of America, the resilience of a people, and their capacity to forgive in order to live with unimaginable grief. A powerful book—especially for times such as these.”—Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., bestselling author of Begin Again

“In Mother Emanuel, Kevin Sack offers a deeply researched, eloquent page-turner, taking us from colonization and the African slave trade to modern times. Along the way, we feel the myriad ways the past still weighs on us, and we meet visionaries inspired by a more generous Bible, and a more democratic America, than the ones they inherited.”—Melissa Fay Greene, author of Praying for Sheetrock and The Temple Bombing

“A gracefully written book about one church and the tragic death of nine martyrs, which also narrates a critical history of enslavement, the search for freedom, and the hatreds that are animated with each new generation. Few accounts of racism and violence in the United States provide such rich and sensitive narrative about how much we all suffer as a result of the nation’s original sins. Breathtaking and beautiful!”—Marcia Chatelain, author of Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America

Author

© Alan S. Weiner
Kevin Sack is a veteran journalist who has written broadly about national affairs for more than four decades and has shared in three Pulitzer Prizes. A native of Jacksonville, Florida, and a graduate of Duke University, he spent thirty years on the staff of The New York Times, where he specialized in writing longform narrative and investigative reports, often related to race. He also has written for the Los Angeles Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and his work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine. He was a 2019 Emerson Collective Fellow at New America. View titles by Kevin Sack

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