Henry Louis Gates: If Clementa Pinckney Had Lived

By HENRY LOUIS GATES Jr.
The New York Times, JUNE 18, 2015

I have no doubt that had the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney lived, he would have become known — and celebrated — across our country for his leadership, rather than sealed immortally in tragedy, one more black martyr in a line stretching back to the more than 800 slave voyages that ended at Charleston Harbor.

I know this because I filmed a long interview with Mr. Pinckney — who was killed in his church in Charleston, S.C., along with eight congregants on Wednesday evening — for a PBS documentary series three years ago. It was clear that there was a reason this young man had been called to preach at 13, to minister at 18, to serve in the State Legislature at 23, and to shepherd one of America’s most historic black churches at 26, reminding us of other prodigies — and martyrs — for whom the Good Book has served as a bedrock of public service. He was 41 when he died.

It was Oct. 26, 2012, shortly before the last presidential election, and I was talking to Mr. Pinckney and to State Representative Kenneth F. Hodges about Robert Smalls, a slave who, at the height of the Civil War, commandeered a Confederate ship to sail to freedom beyond Charleston Harbor and ended up returning home to serve in the State Legislature during Reconstruction — representing the very area these two men now served.

“I think about what it must have felt like to be a young black man in America” back then, Mr. Pinckney told me, “to see the state and the country go through tremendous change and to have an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of everybody.” He added that if Smalls, an escaped slave, could make “substantial, systematic changes,” then “I have the same kind of responsibility to work to make a difference.”

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“Now, well, do I say I’m Smalls?” he said. “No, because there’s only one, there’s only been one Robert Smalls. But I think, as being a House member who served in the old Beaufort district that he used to serve in and a state senator that serves that same area, I think I ought to give it my absolute best to try to make a difference with the lives of the people I represent and the people of South Carolina, whether it be in supporting public education, supporting our troops, or wanting to see all people do well in South Carolina.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/19/opinion/henry-louis-gates-if-clementa-pinckney-had-lived.html?_r=0