Posted on June 18, 2015

Black Activists Fear ‘Race War’ amid Charleston Shooting

S.A. Miller, Washington Times, June 18, 2015

Black community activists raised alarms Thursday about the mass murder at the historic black church potentially sparking race riots in Charleston, South Carolina.

“We don’t need any more bloodshed and we don’t need a race war,” pleaded J. Denise Cromwell, a black community activists. “Charleston has a lot of racial tension. . . . We’re drowning and someone is pouring water over us.”

Ms. Cromwell said that nerves were still raw from the fatal shooting two months ago of a black man, Walter Scott, by a white police officer in neighboring North Charleston, which ignited major protests.

Black activist Michelle Felder, 58, said she feared the city’s young people “aren’t thinking” and might seek revenge, an emotional reaction that she said she understood but was mature enough to resist.

“This is 2015 and we are still going through the same things we went through 50 years ago,” she said. “This is so sickening. We are so tired.”

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