COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — When Jarvis McKenzie locked eyes with the man in the car, he couldn’t understand the hate he saw. When the man picked up a rifle, fired over his head and yelled “you better get running, boy!” as he scrambled behind a brick wall, McKenzie knew it was because he is Black.

McKenzie told his story a month after the shooting because South Carolina is one of two states along with Wyoming that don’t have their own hate crime laws.

About two dozen local governments in South Carolina have passed their own hate crime ordinances as the latest attempt to put pressure on the South Carolina Senate to take a vote on a bill proposing stiffer penalties for crimes driven by hatred of the victims because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, gender or ethnicity.

A decade of pr

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