New Mother Emanuel AME Church Memorial Opens to Honor the Emanuel Nine

A new marble memorial honoring the Emanuel Nine opens to the public on Saturday outside the South’s oldest African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, with spaces for remembrance and reflection.

For Alana Grant, mustering the courage to enter the basement of Mother Emanuel AME Church—where her grandfather, the Rev. Daniel Lee Simmons, attended his final Bible study—required years, though those fears have now yielded to gratitude and hope.

“People can go and remember really what happened here,” Alana Grant said as she and her husband, state Rep. Hamilton Grant, got their first look.

The memorial is anchored by a Fountain of Grace, featuring water flowing from a shallow basin etched with the names of the six women and three men slain by an avowed white supremacist in 2015. Two Fellowship Benches with curved backs flank the fountain, alongside a Cross of Hope signifying redemption. A garden honoring the five survivors will follow.

“I was actually standing out there the other day,” said the Rev. Eric Manning, co-chair of the Mother Emanuel Memorial Foundation board, who took over after pastor and state Sen. Clementa Pinckney was among those killed. “Just for a moment, a peace came over me.”

Michael Arad Researched the Church History and Community

When a committee sought an architect in 2017, they heard from designers worldwide, according to John Darby, a memorial foundation co-chair who runs a Charleston real estate development firm. Final candidates answered deep questions about topics like forgiveness instead of submitting initial design proposals.

Michael Arad, an architect of the 9/11 Memorial whose design was ultimately chosen, spent more than a year doing a deep-dive into the community after his selection. He held lengthy conversations with members of the congregation and researched the church’s 200-year history.

“My job as a designer was to allow people who visit the site to see and hear what was here all along,” Arad said.

Darby pointed out that over the past decade, the foundation has secured approximately $25 million from corporations, endowments, and foundations to cover the memorial, garden, and additional expenses. Malcolm Graham, whose sister Cynthia Graham Hurd died during the attack, anticipated visiting the site to reflect on childhood memories.

“She is the most famous person in our family and I still look up to her,” Graham said.

Established in 1818 by free and enslaved people, Mother Emanuel later served as a site where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights figures spoke. Alana Grant sees the new site as an opportunity to foster generational awareness, noting that tourists still visit daily out of curiosity or sympathy.

“We want more than your thoughts and prayers. We want your advocacy,” she said.