Charleston mass shooting anniversary: Over 2,000 remember victims

More than 2,000 people remembered the nine killed in Charleston church shooting a year ago while also remembering the 49 killed in the recent Orlando attack.

On June 17, 2015, a 21-year-old white man named Dylan Roof ended the lives of nine church members of the Emmanuel A.M.E. Church, the oldest black church in America. A year later, more than 2,000 people gathered to remember the Emmanuel Nine, as they have come to be known, at the College of Charleston's TD Arena.

DePayne Middleton Doctor, Cynthia Graham Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, Clementa Pinckney, Tywanza Sanders, Daniel Simmons, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton and Myra Thompson are the names of the remembered victims who huddled for a Bible study at the church when the gunman attacked.

"The world is in a messed up, confused place at this moment," said Rev. Richard Norris, who led the audience in reading aloud the names of the Emmanuel Nine, as reported by The Post and Courier.

"It is filled with trouble and with pain," Norris said as they also remembered the victims of the mass shooting at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando on June 12, which killed 49 and injured more than 50 others.

Church Pastor Betty Deas Clark, who replaced Rev. Pinckney months after he was killed in the killing spree, also appeared in Orlando to attend counselling sessions with those traumatized by the Pulse gay nightclub shooting. She claimed to know some of the victims.

"Time brings about healing, what you can't see today, what you can't imagine today," Clark shared her message for Orlando, as quoted by CNN. "Tomorrow, you can see it as a reality if you just keep moving forward. That's what we've been doing."

As manifested in the two separate mass shootings, Rt. Rev. Reginald Jackson spoke at the congregation in TD Arena about the ongoing hatred and racism.

"We press on until this nation lives up to its word: One nation under God with liberty and justice for all," Jackson said.