Atlanta Press Club presents Kevin Sack in conversation with Ken Foskett – Mother Emanuel
A sweeping history of one of the nation’s most important African American churches and a profound story of courage and grace amid the fight for racial justice—from Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Kevin Sack
The Atlanta Press Club welcomes author Kevin Sack to Manuel’s Tavern to discuss his powerful new book, “Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church." The author will appear in conversation with Ken Foskett, senior editor for investigations at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and author of “Judging Thomas: The Life and Times of Clarence Thomas.”
This event is open to the public. Registration is free to Atlanta Press Club members, and tickets are $10 for non-members.
A Cappella Books will have copies of “Mother Emanuel” will be available for purchase.
Register below to attend.
About the Book
Few people beyond South Carolina’s Lowcountry knew of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston—Mother Emanuel—before the night of June 17, 2015, when a twenty-one-year-old white supremacist walked into Bible study and slaughtered the church’s charismatic pastor and eight other worshippers. Although the shooter had targeted Mother Emanuel—the first A.M.E. church in the South—to agitate racial strife, he did not anticipate the aftermath: an outpouring of forgiveness from the victims’ families and a reckoning with the divisions of caste that have afflicted Charleston and the South since the earliest days of European settlement.
“Mother Emanuel” explores the fascinating history that brought the church to that moment and the depth of the desecration committed in its fellowship hall. It reveals how African Methodism was cultivated from the harshest American soil, and how Black suffering shaped forgiveness into both a religious practice and a survival tool. Kevin Sack, who has written about race in his native South for more than four decades, uses the church to trace the long arc of Black life in the city where nearly half of enslaved Africans disembarked in North America and where the Civil War began. Through the microcosm of one congregation, he explores the development of a unique practice of Christianity, from its daring breakaway from white churches in 1817, through the traumas of Civil War and Reconstruction, to its critical role in the Civil Rights Movement and beyond.
At its core, “Mother Emanuel” is an epic tale of perseverance, not just of a congregation but of a people who withstood enslavement, Jim Crow, and all manner of violence with an unbending faith.
About the Author
Kevin Sack is a veteran journalist who has written about national affairs for more than four decades and has been part of three Pulitzer Prize–winning teams. A native of Jacksonville, Florida, and a graduate of Duke University, he spent thirty years on the staff of The New York Times, where he specialized in writing long-form narrative and investigative reports, often related to race. He has also written for the Los Angeles Times and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and his work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine. He was a 2019 Emerson Collective Fellow at New America.
About the Conversation Partner
Ken Foskett is a senior editor for investigations at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he leads a team of investigative and data journalists who watchdog state and local government. Additionally, Foskett manages the AJC’s year-round internship program for collegiate journalists. Foskett joined the AJC in 1989 as a local news reporter and covered Fulton County government, the state Legislature and Gov. Zell Miller. He spent five years in the AJC’s Washington bureau and covered the 2000 presidential election before returning to Atlanta as a special projects and investigative reporter. Following his 20-year reporting career, Foskett was the AJC’s opinion page editor and later Sunday features editor, launching and editing Personal Journeys, a weekly narrative about people making a difference. In 2013, the Atlanta Press Club awarded Foskett the club’s Impact Award for Personal Journeys. Foskett also led the reporting team that won the 2018 Impact Award for coverage of open records violations in the city of Atlanta. He is the author of “Judging Thomas: The Life and Times of Clarence Thomas” (William Morrow, 2004). A 2014 graduate of Leadership DeKalb, Foskett serves on the boards of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation and the Atlanta Press Club, co-chairing the internship committee.
