Tywanza

A reflection on Tywanza Sanders, the youngest victim of the Charleston Church massacre that happened 10 years ago today, and why you don’t know who he is

Today marks 10 years since Dylann Storm Roof walked into the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, with a Glock 41 .45-caliber handgun and shot and killed nine African-American parishioners during evening Bible study.

I covered the vigil at the sister church in Coconut Grove for The Miami Times:

“A full moon canopied Greater St. Paul AME Church this past Tuesday, where gospel-glittered voices cut through the drawl of public buses and angry, barking dogs. The historically black Coconut Grove church held a vigil in honor of the Emanuel Nine. There, a mixed group of locals, politicians and concerned visitors gathered and worshiped in a sticky, southern heat that recalled those burning Birmingham four, among other Black church atrocities. Despite the heart-filled tributes and echoes of peace and forgiveness, nothing could quiet the unearthed fear and shock of Wednesday, June 17.”

I didn’t write about how angry the moon looked, shining a blinding brightness, as if it, too, were not just mourning but expelling an evil that circled it the moment those bullets not only penetrated limbs, organs, and skulls, but a protection one feels when gathering with others in sacred spaces. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, Tywanza. Already, the word forgiveness was being flung around in the media. These bodies, still raw with Death, not yet in coffins, flesh still committed to bone, how could this be?

With each detail, a classic American story was unfolding:

When police caught up to the shooter in Shelby, North Carolina, Roof complained that he was hungry, so they stopped at Burger King. “He was very quiet, very calm,” Shelby Police Officer Jeff Ledford told The Charlotte Observer. “He sat down here very quietly. He was not problematic.”

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, Tywanza. Already, the word forgiveness was being flung around in the media. These bodies, still raw with Death, not yet in coffins, flesh still committed to bone, how could this be?

It was hard to sit and listen to the forgiveness rhetoric, especially since it was clear that forgiveness was not being sought. What was being forgiven? The shooting? The Burger King reward? The cultural complicity of violence against black bodies that instigated this massacre?

And then there was the youngest victim, Tywana Sanders. There he was confronted with Death–cold, calculating, unhuman:

“Why are you doing this? You don't have to do this.”

“Why are you doing this? You don't have to do this.”

“Why are you doing this? You don't have to do this.”

His mother, Felicia Sanders, a survivor of the massacre, shares in a 2017 interview that she had been at church all day and that they were going to cancel bible study because of all of the meetings. Her son, Tywanza, texted her, asking if they were going to have bible study, and she confirmed that they were. She says that Dylann Roof walked in five minutes after they started.

“We thought he was just a child coming in to study the bible,” Sanders says. “He was calm and everything.”

“He wasn’t acting weird.” That’s what she says.

“Right as we closed our eyes to pray, the bullets started going off.”

Already wounded, her 26 year old son got up:

“Why are you doing this? You don't have to do this.”

“Why are you doing this? You don't have to do this.”

“Why are you doing this? You don't have to do this.”

Roof responded that he had to because “you’re raping our womens and taking over the world.”

Unable to convince Roof to stop, Tywanza Sanders laid his body across his great aunt Susie Jackson’s body, and Roof unloaded the rest of his bullets into the 26 year old poet.

A year earlier, Sanders earned a business administration degree from Allen University, a historically black school in Columbia, South Carolina, founded by former slaves in 1870.

From the beginning, it was clear that Tywanza wasn’t cool enough, controversial enough for real media attention. Shielding his great Aunt Susie wasn’t clickbait enough. Even today, when you Google his name, there are 12,300 results. Dylann Roof has about 490,000 results.

America speaks bible but believes and works in blood. There’s a reason why there’s no Netflix documentary about the young, black man who gave his life for his great aunt, but there are endless documentaries about murderers, in many ways, celebrating their crimes.

Ten years later, and this country is as far forward as it is backward, its contradictions rising to the surface–restless, uncontainable, unsustainable. What would Tywanza Sanders say of this time, I wonder. I look at his handsome face, and I see the strength and savagery of history. In his smile, that beautiful smile, I see all that was not–the poetry book he wanted to publish, the barbershop he hoped to own, the family.

Four years after the massacre, I reached out to my editor the late Nancy Ancrum at The Miami Herald about doing an OP-ED for The Miami Herald about Tywanza. I am grateful that in a diminishing industry, dependant on Likes and clickbait, she agreed.

A year later, I received this email:

“I just read your Op-Ed on Tywanza today. I lived here in Charleston when the massacre happened, but until today had not really put faces to the names.

Part of my job is to protect sensitive information for a healthcare organization which led me to seeing some documents today related to the Mother Emmanuel shootings that are very sensitive, but have affected me deeply. It’s kind of hard rectifying my current feelings with the fact that I’m a middle aged white guy, raised in a devoutly racist part of Alabama, now living just a few miles from survivors of that horrific shooting that took place here. I’m not sure why I felt compelled to share this with you, but having read your account of Tywanza’s life, it really makes me feel like I can and have to do more. Thank you for what you wrote. This story should be shouted from the mountaintops.”