Charleston's tragedy is the nation's wound

The following June 29 editorial from the Panama City News Herald may or may not reflect the views of the Cheney Free Press editorial board.

In the wake of the murders at a Charleston, S.C. church, details are sinking in — and with them, the recognition that racism lives, breathes and festers, even as we dream that it is a thing of the past.

A man just 21 — looking more like a schoolboy than a hard-core white supremacist — stands accused of killing nine respected community members, all black, at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. They were kind to him as he joined them in...