Biden to travel to Mother Emanuel AME in South Carolina

President Joe Biden is headed to Charleston, South Carolina, next week to visit Mother Emanuel AME Church in the latest signal of a campaign eager to shore up its standing with Black voters.

It will be the president’s first trip to the storied church since he was vice president. Biden is expected to speak at the church, his campaign told reporters on Tuesday evening. It is one of the oldest Black churches in the South and the site where nine parishioners were shot and killed by a white supremacist in 2015.

“Because whether it is white supremacists descending on a historic American city of Charlottesville, the assault on our nation's capital on Jan. 6, or white supremacists murdering churchgoers at Mother Emanuel nearly nine years ago, America is worried about the rise in political violence and determined to stand against it,” principal deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks said in a call with reporters.

Biden’s visit to South Carolina will be his fourth as president, underscoring just how critically he regards the state. South Carolina will hold the year’s first sanctioned Democratic primary, and the president’s team is under pressure to demonstrate strength among the minority-heavy Democratic electorate there.

The campaign has responded by visiting repeatedly. Biden’s trip Monday will come just two days after Vice President Kamala Harris will be in South Carolina to give her own set of remarks about freedom to the Seventh Episcopal District AME Church Women’s Missionary Society.

Campaign aides say the two visits are meant to send a clear signal that they aren’t taking Black voters for granted. They’re also trying to put a face to the benefits they believe the administration has provided.

“We're not going to wait and