Photo Courtesy of Roof website
The department announced that the family members of those who were slaughtered would receive $6-7.5 million each. Those who survived would receive $5 million each, making the settlement one of the largest in civil rights history.
Eliana Pinckney, the daughter of the late pastor Pinckney, said at a press conference Thursday, “They can’t bring my father back … But they’re doing whatever they can to acknowledge the fact that this hurts. This is pain that I’m going to have to live with for the rest of my life.”
“As a young African-American woman, to see the government acknowledge the fact that racism still exists … and do everything they can to correct a mistake that happened is so important,” she added.
According to the Huff Post, Bakari Sellers, a former South Carolina House of Representatives member and close friend to victim Clementa Pinckney, commented on the number 88 being significant in white supremacist groups.
“88 is a weird number because it’s enveloped in so much hate. Dylann Roof had 88 on his shoes,” Sellers said of the number, which is, according to him, a hate symbol that and means “Heil Hitler.”
“88 is steeped in so much white supremacy and hate. And so today, we get to give … a big F-U to the white supremacists and racists in this country by saying that we’re taking this tragedy that they tried to tear our country apart with and building Black communities and generational wealth.”
In 2015, notorious white supremacist Dylann Roof murdered nine people praying at a Bible study inside the historically Black church. The assassin later told officers he committed the crime in hopes of starting a race war.
The families and survivors decided to file a lawsuit against the FBI in 2016 after they failed to conduct a thorough background check during the firearm sale, which allowed Roof to obtain the weapon he used for the massacre.