Charleston Police Chief: We’re Investigating Church Shooting as a ‘Hate Crime’

Charleston Church Shooting: KKK, White Supremacists Operate in S.C. (NBC News)

South Carolina is home to 19 known hate groups — including two factions of the Ku Klux Klan and four "white nationalist" organizations, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

While police described Wednesday's massacre in Charleston, South Carolina, of nine people at one of the nation's oldest African-American churches as a hate crime, they did not suggest the attack was linked to any group.