A Child of the “Mother”

By Evelyn Rose Sinkler

When your church becomes the scene of the crime, how do you move forward with forgiveness and love in your heart? When the bell tolls for your pastor and your church family, where do you get the strength to say farewell? On June 17, 2015, a young white supremacist walked through a side entrance of “Mother” Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and killed nine people.
In A Child of the “Mother”, author Evelyn Rose Sinkler, a longtime parishioner, tells how the history of hatred of blacks in America once again reared its ugly head, and she discusses how members of that church were thrust into unimaginable days of grief. She reveals her journey of mourning and chronicles the days of the funerals as an usher at some of the funerals. Sinkler shares the emotional roller coaster the church family experienced as they memorialized the lives of their pastor and friends.
Through heartfelt words, journal entries, and poems, this memoir offers a testament of the love and respect Sinkler holds for the nine lives lost and the survivors of June 17, 2015. It also provides a testament that family and a church family built on a foundation of love can lift one up during the darkest hours.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Feb 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9781973649823

Evelyn Rose Sinkler

Evelyn Rose Sinkler grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, and is a member of “Mother” Emanuel AME Church. She felt a bond with the people who were shot down at her church June 17, 2015. Sinkler taught high school English for more than thirty years in the Charleston County Schools. As a retired educator, she continues to contribute to the field of education as a tutor for at-risk students. Sinkler has two sons, two daughters of the heart, two grandsons, and a very large family and extended family who love and support her in all she does.

Book preview

Part I

Patience in Tribulation

Chapter 1

Her Majestic Voice

Emanuel, God is with us.

Through the years, the voices

of your enslaved people

cried to the hills,

"Don’t leave or forsake us!

Onward we march toward

higher goals."

Our voices cried out

as we struggled to build, then rebuild.

We struggled, brick by brick,

voice by voice.

For racism, division, and

red stains are once again

upon our white facade.

Where do we go from here?

We continue to cry.

We continue to pray.

            Emanuel,

                        the voice

                        of your people

                        will never fade.

Chapter 2

Oh, Happy Day

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Oh, happy day!

School has let out for summer. I am nostalgic because I am close to being completely retired. I semiretired as a teacher in 2009. For the past seven years, I’ve worked as a one-to-one assistant with Duane Jenkins.

Duane was burned in a house fire as an infant and has some disabilities. He is scheduled to graduate in June 2016, and my plan is to graduate right along with him—at least from the Charleston County Schools as my employer. Duane is like a son to me, so our time together during the school day has become bittersweet. This will be what I call my last summer break; when 2016 comes, I will be breaking all year long.

I enjoy the lazy, hazy days of summer. They go too quickly. I often tease others in the teaching profession that our summer break is just three weeks since it goes so fast. I look forward to doing what I want when I want. I don’t have a husband, and my sons are grown, so to me, summer equals freedom from all restrictions.

I look forward to traveling to Chicago with the Traveling Partners, a group of women from Emanuel who organize trips to different regions in our country. We were scheduled to leave on Sunday, June 21, 2015. I was also looking forward to traveling with my four brothers and four sisters for our annual Family Memorial Weekend. My siblings and our offspring gather once a year for a special commemoration of our parents and other close family members who have gone on to glory.

In remembering our parents, we do what they were fond of doing when they were alive, which is traveling and enjoying the fellowship of family. This year we were going to Washington, DC, on July 15, 2015. I also had a few other, smaller trips planned between Chicago and DC.

Being as free as a bird to do what I wanted to do in the meantime meant I could fully participate in Holy Convocation at my sister Alice’s church, the Life Center of Charleston.

Alice Rose, the seventh of nine children, is my only sibling who attends a church other than Mother Emanuel. I often tease her about defecting, but something drew her to Life Center, and she has been a member for years. Unlike me, she almost never misses a service at her church. Alice started developing her relationship with God at a very young age. In fact, my brother Leo dubbed her a missionary Muslim to describe her fervor for God as a young girl.

Alice has a leadership role at her church. She’s at church on Sundays for services and Tuesdays for Bible study, and she is there whenever the church doors are open and whenever her members need her. She is also a deacon, which is equivalent to a class leader in AME churches. Deacons and class leaders are responsible to several congregants assigned to them. They’re responsible in making sure their assigned members are spiritually in good standing. They pray with their members and make sure the pastor is aware of any needs of the members.

Holy Convocation at the Life Center is the epitome of all church conferences. Members of Life Center satellite churches also convene here in Charleston during Holy Convocation. Holy Convocation is the equivalent of AME churches’ annual conferences. Besides taking care of the business of the church, the Life Center has workshops and dynamic, nationally known speakers and singers.

I usually attend one or two evening services. This time around, Alice asked some of my siblings and me to register for the whole conference. Since I often enjoy the worship experience at the Life Center of Charleston, I was ready. The worship service at the Life Center is different from our worship service at Mother Emanuel. Do I dare say it? It’s livelier. The praise and worship at the beginning of the service are much longer than ours; the music is clamorous. At any given point, you may see someone filled with the Holy Spirit sprinting around the church. I think Alice left the mild-mannered services of Emanuel to go to the more charismatic services at the Life Center.

Before I head out to meet Alice, I do the two things I always do before I leave my house: I pray and then check on my two sons. Having raised my sons by myself and having seen them become productive, responsible young men makes me a proud mother. But the worry is constant. With two sons, I’m doubly worried, and the worry isn’t unfounded, considering the times in which we live.

Just lately, it seems young black men’s lives have been taken simply because they were black. I know this happened back in the days when very few consequences were meted out because the system did not think that lives of blacks mattered. But there seems to be a rehashing of those sentiments lately.

Fresh in my mind are the incidents involving Oscar Grant in California, Trayvon Martin in Florida, Jordan Davis in Florida, and most recently in my very own hometown, Walter Scott. What is so worrisome to me is that Oscar, Trayvon, and Jordan were involved in activities that did not appear to be threatening, but they paid the ultimate