The church 's senior pastor , the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney , had held rallies after the shooting of Walter Scott by a white police officer two months earlier , in nearby North Charleston , and as a state senator , Pinckney pushed for legislation requiring police to wear body cameras . Several observers noted a similarity between the massacre at Emanuel AME and the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing of a politically active African-American church in Birmingham , Alabama , where the Ku Klux Klan ( KKK ) killed four black girls and injured fourteen others , an attack that galvanized the civil rights movement
16th Street Baptist Church bombing
16th Street Baptist Church bombing
Charleston church shooting