The moment Melvin Graham learned three Black people were fatally shot in a racially motivated rampage at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida, he said his mind raced back to June 17, 2015. That was the day his sister and eight other congregants of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, were gunned down by a white supremacist during a Bible study.
As he listened to news reports from Jacksonville describing the Aug. 26 massacre, Graham said his blood began to boil with anger that once again America was being rocked by a heinous hate crime like the one that claimed the life of his sister, Cynthia Graham Hurd.