Epps: Clementa Pinckney and his parishioners gave up everything; can’t we give up a flag?

Clementa Pinckney was my closest friend in graduate school. From 1997 through 1999, we spent two years together getting our master’s degrees in public administration at the University of South Carolina. He was 24, and I was 26. We worked together as office assistants in order to receive a tuition reduction.

At 24, Clementa had his own congregation in Jasper County; he had constituents he was serving in Jasper, Beaufort and Charleston counties; and he was taking a full semester load of graduate classes while working 20 hours a week in an office with me making copies and stuffing faculty boxes.

The humility. The grace. The strength. He epitomized a servant leader.

He and I both entered our dating phases with the women we were to marry. We went to each other’s weddings. He introduced me to a friend of his and helped me get a job after graduate school. He is the only candidate for whom I have walked door-to-door, canvassing a large part of James Island when he ran for state Senate. Later we had our first children a year apart. When my mother got cancer, Clem drove to Aiken and prayed with her and over her, holding her hand weeks before she died. Sadly, years later, Clem’s mother also died of cancer.

My relatives fought in both the Revolutionary and Confederate wars. I love this fine state, and I am proud to be a Southerner.

Are the feelings and the heritage we as whites associate with a symbol such as the Confederate battle standard on the State House grounds damaged or diminished by the flag’s being placed in a museum? And if you feel you lose something by this taking place, is your feeling of loss more important than another’s loss? Like the loss of the families of those killed in Charleston?

Can we as white South Carolinians look at Jennifer (Clem’s widow) or Eliiana (11) and Malana (5) (Clem’s daughters) and say “my pain is worse than yours”? We need to live up to our professed Christian values and put the needs of our black brothers and sisters above our own. By doing so, we will step closer to being what God wants us to be, and we will honor the sacrifice of my good friend.

We can give up something because he and the other victims gave everything.

Columbia

This story was originally published June 24, 2015 at 7:00 PM.