Mother Emanuel AME church made an ecumenical gesture for the commemoration of a racist shooting that killed nine of its Black members 10 years ago on Tuesday.

America now has seen exactly what black America has been knowing for a couple of hundred years, he said. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)For black clergy across the United States, the past 10 days have been a tumultuous test of their stamina and their skills. For weeks, they had been striving to comfort their congregations amid a pandemic taking a disproportionately heavy toll on African-Americans. Dwight McKissic, pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas. Just trying to pastor effectively in a pandemic world -- that alone has been a full challenge, McKissic said.

Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church's former secretary spoke to South Carolina Law Enforcement Division investigators about donations the church received after the 2015 shooting. CHARLESTON, S.C. - South Carolina authorities are investigating the historic African-American church that was targeted by a white supremacist in a 2015 massacre in Charleston, authorities say, but details are few. The donations that Latham reportedly discussed with SLED were the subject of a wrongful termination lawsuit she filed against the church in 2016. Families were upset that the church kept more money than it doled out to the victims, Savage said. Each of the nine victims' immediate families received $150,000.