President Biden planned to engage Black voters by bringing his campaign to the scene of one of the most horrific hate crimes in recent years, where he intends to denounce the racism and extremism that have molded U.S. politics.
Biden journeyed from his family home in Wilmington, Del., to Charleston, S.C., on Monday to address Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, where a white supremacist gunman took the lives of the pastor and eight others in 2015.
The president is scheduled to visit a second campaign location before the upcoming election. Having addressed an audience near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, a week earlier, he took the opportunity to criticize his anticipated Republican opponent, the twice-impeached and four-times-indicted former President Donald Trump.
Biden’s speech about Trump coincided with the third anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack in which Trump allegedly instigated the riot that led to the deaths of five law enforcement officers. To emphasize the importance of the November election to a pivotal voting demographic, the president’s team decided a visit to Mother Emanuel Church could galvanize Black voters.
The Biden campaign described the church as an important place for the country right now. In 2015, after the massacre, Biden, who at the time was vice president, accompanied President Barack Obama to Charleston for the funeral of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, a state senator who was also a pastor. After his son Beau died from cancer, Biden returned a few days later to pray with the church congregation.
Influential South Carolina Democratic Rep. James Clyburn and Obama have voiced concerns about the Biden campaign’s outreach to African Americans and the president’s ability to maintain a robust Black voter base.
