Statements

A 2500-word ‘manifesto’ titled The Last Rhodesian (link to text), apparently written by Roof details his motivation and discusses the different racial groups he has issues with:  The site also has images of Roof burning the America flag, posing next to symbols of the Confederacy and posing with a gun pointed at the camera.

The event that truly awakened me was the Trayvon Martin case. I kept hearing and seeing his name, and eventually I decided to look him up. I read the Wikipedia article and right away I was unable to understand what the big deal was. It was obvious that Zimmerman was in the right. But more importantly this prompted me to type in the words “black on White crime” into Google, and I have never been the same since that day. The first website I came to was the Council of Conservative Citizens. There were pages upon pages of these brutal black on White murders. I was in disbelief. At this moment I realized that something was very wrong. How could the news be blowing up the Trayvon Martin case while hundreds of these black on White murders got ignored?

He then discusses various racial groups: Blacks, Jews, Hispanics, Asians.

Niggers are stupid and violent. At the same time they have the capacity to be very slick. Black people view everything through a racial lense. Thats what racial awareness is, its viewing everything that happens through a racial lense. They are always thinking about the fact that they are black. This is part of the reason they get offended so easily, and think that some thing are intended to be racist towards them, even when a White person wouldnt be thinking about race. The other reason is the Jewish agitation of the black race. Black people are racially aware almost from birth, but White people on average dont think about race in their daily lives. And this is our problem. We need to and have to. Say you were to witness a dog being beat by a man. You are almost surely going to feel very sorry for that dog. But then say you were to witness a dog biting a man. You will most likely not feel the same pity you felt for the dog for the man. Why? Because dogs are lower than men. This same analogy applies to black and White relations.

And ends with an “Explanation”:

To take a saying from a film, “I see all this stuff going on, and I dont see anyone doing anything about it. And it pisses me off.”. To take a saying from my favorite film, “Even if my life is worth less than a speck of dirt, I want to use it for the good of society.” I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country. We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.

Joey Meek, a friend who reconnected with Roof a few weeks prior to the shootings, says that while they got drunk together on vodka, Roof began complaining that:

Blacks were taking over the world [and that] someone needed to do something about it for the white race.

Meek says that during their reunion Roof told him that he had used birthday money from his parents to buy a .45-caliber Glock pistol and that he had “a plan” that was six months in the making. He didn’t say what the plan was, but Meek said it scared him enough that he took the gun out of Roof’s car and hid it in his house until the next day.

Dalton Tyler, who says he has known Roof for seven months to one year, says he saw Roof last week.

[He had been] planning something like that for six months…He was big into segregation and other stuff. He said he wanted to start a civil war. He said he was going to do something like that and then kill himself.

Tyler says he met Roof through a good friend. He also says Roof and his parents have an “on and off” relationship, and that they had bought him a gun but never allowed him to take it with him until this past week.