Charleston, South Carolina on June 17th, 2017, a man murdered nine black Americans in a historically black church. He did this attack to start a race war. He murdered nine innocent people that welcomed him with open arms in their place of worship. He faces 33 federal counts, including hate crimes. Three people survived the killings. Roof approached one, Polly Sheppard, and told her, “he would leave her alive to tell his story.” Throughout the massacre, he shouted racial slurs, and said he wanted “a war between whites and blacks because blacks were raping white women and taking over the country.”

Dylann Roof called himself a white nationalist, and chose Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church because “there would be a small amount [sic] of black people in one place.” On January 4th, Roof represented himself to keep his attorneys from releasing his mental health evaluation publicly, and filed a motion that said the victim impact statements were “too excessive.” In the beginning of the trial, a website was found showing Dylann Roof’s thinking on race and the Trayvon Martin case. Dylann Roof joins a list of infamous killers, such as Timothy J. McVeigh, one of two people convicted in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Never forget the victims and their family, and never forget how racism is still a problem in today’s world.