In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Great Awakenings, Baptist and Methodist missionaries had evangelized among both enslaved and free African Americans in the South, as well as whites.

A dispute arose after white leaders of Bethel Methodist authorized construction of a hearse house over its black burial ground.

[7] In June 1822, Denmark Vesey, one of the church's founders, was implicated in an alleged slave revolt plot.

[10] The city conducted additional trials over the following weeks, as the number of suspects increased while men were interrogated.

They ultimately convicted and executed more than 30 men, and deported other suspected participants from the state, including Vesey's son.

In reaction to Nat Turner's slave rebellion of 1831, in 1834 the white-run city of Charleston outlawed all-black churches.

[7] After an earthquake demolished that building in 1886,[3] President Grover Cleveland donated ten dollars to the church to aid its rebuilding efforts.

[23] The building was designed by leading Charleston architect John Henry Devereux; the work was begun in the spring of 1891 and completed in 1892.

[24] In March 1909, Booker T. Washington, president of Tuskegee Institute and a national leader, spoke at Emanuel AME Church.

[25] Among the attendees were many whites, including a member of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and Robert Goodwyn Rhett, the mayor of Charleston; he was a lawyer and controlling owner of the News and Courier newspaper.

[28] At the time, most African Americans in the South were still disenfranchised, which they had been since the turn of the century when the white-dominated legislatures passed restrictive conditions raising barriers to voter registration in new constitutions and laws.

[34] On December 31, 2012, the church held a watchnight service; they celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, which was issued on January 1, 1863.

[35] Charleston's annual Emancipation Day Parade on January 1 ends at Emanuel AME Church.

The victims included South Carolina State Senator Clementa Pinckney, senior pastor, and eight members of his congregation:[39] Cynthia Hurd, Depayne Middleton-Doctor, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Susie Jackson, Myra Thompson, Tywanza Sanders, Ethel Lance, and Daniel Simmons.

The killings were investigated by state and federal law enforcement officials as a possible hate crime, and it was found that they were.

The church received a $12,330 federal historic preservation grant from the state of South Carolina to complete a structural investigation in May 2014.

[50] A producer of a documentary film, The AME Movement: African Methodism in South Carolina, that describes the history of the AME church movement in South Carolina, held a Kickstarter fundraising campaign in 2013, but failed to reach his goal.