Gwen Moten (GM)

GM: Denise and I, we went everywhere together. We stayed over each other’s house, we’d sleep in the same bed, and we had become so close that the teachers actually separated us. The last time I saw Denise was the night before the bombing. I remember her mother asking my mother if I could go with her to church the next day but, my mother said, “No.” So I walked her to the door and I said, ah, “I’ll see you later.” And I recall that so clearly because for so long I couldn’t say those words, “I’ll se you later”, to anyone. And I didn’t know why I wouldn’t until I became adult. As I child, I don’t, I don’t know if I understood death. There was someone I used to touch and talk with whose life was taken away. During that time, many churches, homes, black businesses were bombed. It was like part of life. It was a part of living and growing up in the South. But when I heard about the shooting in the church in South Carolina. I began to shake, I began to cry. It just came out of me because it stays within you. And it’s almost like here is this link, another link of, ah, death. And the question is, when will we break this link?