When race, politics, history and religion meet at the social intersection that we all negotiate at different periods in life, changes can pull you down a road that you never thought was possible.

The nine beautiful people who lost their lives at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., are a true portrait of dignity, strength, grace and faith that really colors who we are as a people. We are at that intersection today.

Commentary

A worship experience was why they were there. Racism would not allow them to leave alive.

I have never seen the power and dignity of a people so draped in pain and blood that they could rise above such a murderous moment that engulfed them. The people from Mother Emanuel are really who we are.

Walter Anderson once wrote, “Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have — life itself.”

Nine families of Emanuel AME Church, the community and the nation paid a high price for the acts of a coward. African-American people have paid a high price to be who we are and just live in this country.

Even in a social context, a people must determine and analyze the price they pay for progress, acceptance and violence perpetrated against them. The massacre in South Carolina reminds me of the terrible price we have paid in America.

In his book, “The Debt,” Randall Robinson tells us in no uncertain terms “what white America owes blacks and what blacks owe themselves.”

When history thrusts upon us a life-changing event like Charleston, we must and should make promises that we will not allow this to happen again.

We must promise ourselves that we will protect and defend our community.

We must promise ourselves that we will build businesses, schools and institutions that lift and reward us.

We must promise ourselves that we can live our lives in such a way that would do honor and justice to the nine who died at Mother Emanuel.

Death where is your victory?

The writer is interim executive director of Virginia State Conference NAACP.