A Way Forward for South Carolina

On the evening of June 17, 2015, a hate crime took place at a Wednesday prayer meeting at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. The horrid nature of the crime, the cold-blooded assassination of innocent people solely because they were black—all under the ideology of white supremacy—shocked the nation. In an op-ed for the Post and Courier in Charleston and The Greenville News, Richard Riley and Don Gordon write that now is the time to work deliberately to effect systemic change and build a more inclusive South Carolina. Riley, a 1954 Furman graduate, has served as Governor of South Carolina and U.S. Secretary of Education. Gordon is director of the Riley Institute at Furman and a Professor of Political Science.