Dylann Roof

The Scholar Helping America Grapple with Its Ugly History

Historian Keisha N. Blain knows Donald Trump and Dylann Roof didn't come out of nowhere.

Reflecting on the Charleston Syllabus One Year Later

by Chad Williams, Kidada Williams and Keisha N. Blain

How 3 educators tried to put the Charleston massacre into historical perspective online.

The Anomaly of Dylann Roof

White-on-black murders rarely result in a death sentence. Roof might be an exception.

After Dylann Roof, Ken Burns's Civil War documentary seems flawed

by Christopher Dickey

As Eric Foner noted at the time it was released, it largely overlooks the cause of the Civil War:  slavery.

Charleston and the Amok Syndrome

by Thomas Fleming

While there is a connection to the so-called Lost Cause on the surface of Dylann Roof’s disturbed mind, it is not an explanation for the tragedy. The reason for the bloodshed is psychiatric, not racial or political.

Charleston Shooting Exposes America’s Pro-Apartheid Cold War Past

by R. Joseph Parrott

To win friends during the Cold War Rhodesia and South Africa, playing up its anti-communism, courted the white south.

The Persistence of Myth in Southern Politics and Life

by Ron Briley

The notion that the Civil War and Reconstruction were foisted upon a defenseless South by a tyrannical central government retains considerable influence in a Southern ideology of persecution.

Bring down the Confederate flag, not memory of Civil War fallen

by Jonathan Zimmerman

In the wake of the Charleston murders, the campaign against the Confederate flag has morphed into attacks on other historical vestiges of the Confederacy itself. And anyone who cares about history should be alarmed by that.

Dylann Roof Was No Lone Madman

by Randall Law

He was a terrorist and he has plenty of company.

It’s Not the Old South that Died this Week. It Was the New South.

by Glenda Gilmore

Now it’s time for a new New South.

South Carolina’s warped public display of its white-supremacist history confronts South Carolinians, white and black, with a stark message about who rules the state.

by Eric Foner

The burgeoning movement to take down the Confederate flag in South Carolina and other states is an important first step. Even after it is gone, however, the public display of history in South Carolina will remain biased and one-dimensional.

How The South Lost The War But Won The Narrative

by Tony Horwitz

Furling the statehouse flag may bring temporary relief to South Carolinians, but what we truly need to bury is the gauzy fiction that the antebellum South was in any way benign, or that slavery and white supremacy weren’t the cornerstone of the Confederacy.

Homegrown Extremists Tied to Deadlier Toll Than Jihadists in U.S. Since 9/11

A count by a research center found that non-Muslim extremists have been far more lethal than Islamic militants on American soil since Sept. 11, 2001, running counter to public perception.

The Long Campaign by White Supremacists to “Take Our Country Back”

by Roy E. Finkenbine

The Civil War ended one hundred and fifty years ago this month. Instead of taking our country back, isn’t it time to take it forward?

Chad Williams Crowdsources a Syllabus on the Charleston Shootings

What prompted him? Public conversations about the shooting were generally devoid of the kind of historical knowledge that frames contemporary racial violence and its deep roots. Twitter's helping.

Terrorism in Charleston

by Jelani Cobb

Beneath this philological fracas lay a truth evident to political speechwriters, eulogists, and news anchors: in times of tragedy, language matters.

The Charleston shooting shows the growing globalization of white nationalism

by Morris Dees and J. Richard Cohen

Americans tend to view attacks like the mass murder in Charleston as isolated hate crimes, but many are connected to a broader movement, says the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Hard Truths We Have to Face in the Wake of Charleston include the Gender and Race of the Shooter

by Karen Garner

If we can’t control ourselves, we should control our guns.

S.C. Killer Dylann Roof’s Segregation Inspiration: The Council of Conservative Citizens and the Politicians Who Pander to Them

When Dylann Roof discovered the Council of Conservative Citizens and was radicalized, he was tapping into a deep history of Southern racism.

Was the Co-Founder of Charleston's Emanuel Church a Victim of Racist Paranoia, Too?

by Jonathan Zimmerman

Some have speculated that Roof chose the historic black church—and even the date of his horrific deed—because it was co-founded by Denmark Vesey, a former slave who was hanged for planning to lead a slave revolt in Charleston on June 16, 1822.