ESSEX COUNTY, NJ, U.S.A.
SPEECH AND LANGUAGE PATHOLOGIST, COACH, PASTOR
06/17/2015, CHARLESTON, SC
Sharonda A. Coleman-Singleton was born September 24, 1969. She was a graduate of SC State University and member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. She worked as a school speech and language pathologist, and was a track coach at Goose Creek High School. Pastor Coleman-Singleton was a mother of three children, Christopher, Carmyn, and Caleb. She was an ordained minister at the church in which she died.
Pastor Coleman-Singleton was the daughter of the late George Thomas Jones and Wanda (Coleman) Cohen, sister of Jacqueline Askew (Garrett), Mark Anthony Jones (Denise), Shalisa Coleman, Earl Cohen, Jr, Jerell Cohen, and Joseph Holden.
Chris Singleton stood in front of the building bearing his mother’s name on Monday afternoon and asked everybody in attendance to “hug somebody that doesn’t look like you.”
As he hugged a middle-aged white man, Chris Singleton exclaimed, “I love you.”
“Those three simple words and that simple hug are so powerful,” Singleton added a moment later. “You might just have stopped somebody from doing something terrible to themselves – or even worse, to others.”
Love, from powerful forgiveness to team spirit, was the theme of the day, and the idea that Singleton hopes is carried forward with the Sharonda Coleman-Singleton Baseball Complex at Charleston Southern University.
The complex was dedicated in memory of Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Chris’ mother, one of nine victims in the Mother Emanuel AME killings in Charleston in June 2015.
Chris Singleton inspired the world the day after his mother was killed with his message of “Love is always stronger than hate,” spoken on the baseball field at CSU.
Those words are engraved on the memorial outside the Coleman-Singleton complex, with nine palmetto trees representing the nine victims.
Chris Singleton the son of a victim in Charleston’s 2015 church shooting says his work to impact lives will go on. “I know God has great things in store for my life.”