PHI THI THACH

Last year, I spent three intense months in South Carolina tracing the rise of white supremacist organizations in America and the radicalization of Dylann Roof, the first American to be sentenced to death for a hate crime. After six months of reporting, this piece is now out in GQ’s September Issue. For five years, I was committed to writing only about Black America, but then this act of terrorism happened. Thanks to Daniel Riley, my editor, and GQ for believing in my pitch back in October (and not laughing me out of the room when I swore that Trump would win). Thanks to Jim Nelson and Chris Cox for finding the space to run all 11k words and for letting this piece be one of the longest pieces of reporting that GQ has published in a decade. I’m grateful to their magazine for sending me down there to figure this out as a black woman, and for staying the very long editorial course until we had something solid. Thanks to Will Stephenson of GQ for his fastidious fact-checking. Thanks to Condé Nast’s legal team as well. And of course, many, many deep bows to Sarah Chalfant and Rebecca Nagel of the Wylie Agency for their tireless support and their Joan of Arcing. Thanks to my dear, dear E (who nothing makes sense without) and my true blue friends who accepted my crazed calls when shit got super hairy and stayed silent when I didn’t play it safe. But most of all, much light and all of my compassion goes out to the Charleston Nine– Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Clementa Pinckney, Tywanza Sanders, Daniel Simmons, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton and Myra Thompson–and their families who taught me the greatest lesson of all: How we, the people, will always prevail no matter how vast the hatred is.