MEC before the speech

In Charleston, South Carolina on January 8th, 2024, an unexpected turn of events took place during President Biden’s speech at the Mother Emanuel AME Church. A group of 3 Pro-Palestinian protested about the current conflict in the country. One woman began the protest by standing up and shouting, “If you really care about the lives lost here then you should call for a ceasefire in Palestine.” This happened in a particularly passionate part of the speech when President Joe Biden was speaking about his dead son, Beau Biden who died at 46 of brain cancer. One member of the audience recalled the moment as, “jarring and startling”. It was so silent in the seconds leading up to the outburst because people were taking in the heaviness of Mr. President’s story about his son.

Security quickly came to the rescue, escorting the 3 protestors out of the beautiful and historic church. This act brought immediate attention to the cause but some members of the audience said they found it disrespectful. “I can’t believe they would do that. especially since the speakers before President Biden said to ‘please respect this sacred place’¨

The ¨Lives lost here¨ that the Palestinian protesters were talking about, refer to the Emmanuel 9 (Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Clementa Pinckney, Tywanza Sanders, Daniel Simmons Sr., Sharonda Coleman-Singleton and Myra Thompson.) These wonderful people were shot during a bible study by Dylann Roof, a young man of only 21. Roof was a neo-Natzi, white supremacist, and also a mass murderer. He shot these people because he was extremely racist. In an interview with Roof, he said “How could our faces, skin color, and body structure be so different, but our brains exactly the same?” In the video of the interview, Roof laughed and made handgun motions while talking about the shooting. Roof said the victims “complicated things” by hiding under chairs and tables. “I knew that would be a place to get a small amount of black people in one area,”

Because of this shooting, there was lots of publicity for Biden’s speech. However, the interruption took away from a very touching part of the speech but also helped the protestors make their point known.