国际英语新闻:Relative of Church Shooting Victim Tells Suspect: 'I Forgive You'

In a second take on the shooting deaths Friday, President Barack Obama told the U.S. Conference of Mayors in San Franciso that it was not good enough to "show sympathy." Americans, he said, have to "reckon with what happened."

As he did the day before, the president framed his reaction in terms of curbing the use of guns, but was more emphatic, verging on anger. He said he refused to act as if shootings like the ones in Charleston were the "new normal."

Calling for a change in attitudes, he said, "We have to have a conversation about this and fix this."

The president also for the first time spoke about race in relation to the shootings: "Racism remains a blight we have to combat together."

At Mother Emanuel

A spontaneous memorial for the victims is growing outside Mother Emanuel, as the church is affectionately known, as people bring flowers, balloons and placards in remembrance of the victims.

VOA's Amanda Scott, reporting from Charleston, said that strangers of all ages and races embraced each other, offering their support and vowing not to allow the tragedy to tear their city apart.

"Our message to our community, our whole community, is we appreciate all the love and support, but truly speaking we didn't expect any less because the people here are like the climate — they are warm, they're caring, they're loving," Marlene Coakley Jenkins, sister of victim Myra Thompson, who led the Bible study the night of the shooting, told VOA.

The shooting marks one of the most notorious attacks on a black church in the South since the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four girls and helped galvanize the U.S. civil rights movement. The bombing was tied to the Ku Klux Klan.

Emanuel AME Church was founded in 1816 after splitting from the city's white Methodist Episcopal church, making it one of the oldest African-American congregations in the southern United States.