Henry Louis Gates asked, "Why does black political participation matter so much?" and Clementa Pinckney said:
"We need to be a part, if we want a say in our own life, if we want to be independent, if we want to influence what’s happening around us. Or the reverse is to let everybody else control and influence and then we just sort of take whatever comes. That’s what slaves did. But, you know, we’re not slaves.We’re Americans, so we have a responsibility to look at ourselves — self-help, if you will. I also think that we have a historic legacy that we need to uphold."The Reverend Clementa C. Pinckney was the pastor of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston and one of the 9 who died in Wednesday night's massacre.
