The Rev. Clementa Pinckney, one of the nine people killed Wednesday at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., appeared in the 2013 PBS documentary The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
PBS NewsHour posted a clip from the documentary in which he spoke about black participation in the political process. Pinckney was also a South Carolina state senator.
“We don’t have the privilege to say our vote doesn’t count, because history tells us differently,” Pinckney said in the interview.
In an article in the New York Times, Gates said that Pinckney “would have become known — and celebrated — across our country for his leadership, rather than sealed immortally in tragedy, one more black martyr.”