Chicago - Thousands of hate crimes are reported in the United States every year, but rarely do they involve the carnage seen at a black church in South Carolina where nine people were gunned down during a Bible study meeting.
Wednesday's attack provoked comparisons to the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham church, which killed four little girls and wounded more than 20 congregants in one of the deadliest attacks carried out during the civil rights movement.
"The fact that this took place in a black church obviously also raises questions about a dark part of our history," President Barack Obama said Thursday.
"This is not the first time that black churches have been attacked. And we know that hatred across races and faiths pose a particular threat to our democracy and our ideals."
The attack was also reminiscent of the 2012 attack on a Sikh temple by a white supremacist US military veteran that left six people dead in Wisconsin.
The death toll in Charleston is "unprecedented" in terms of recent US incidents of racially-motivated violence, said Jens David Ohlin, a law professor at Cornell University.
Most of the mass shootings that have stunned the nation in recent years were perpetrated by mentally disturbed people with no political motive.
But the accused Charleston gunman -- 21-year-old Dylann Roof -- is believed to be a white supremacist who reportedly told his victims: "I have to do it. You're raping our women and taking over the country. You have to go."
AFP
