Washington: Charleston's historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church reopened its doors and held its first service four days after a 21-year-old white man gunned down nine black church members in one of the worst tragedies of its kind at a US religious institution.

"A lot of folks expected us to do something strange and to break out in a riot. Well, they just don't know us," Reverend Norvel Goff said, on Sunday, before hundreds of worshippers. "We are a people of faith." One of the victims of the massacre was the church's pastor, Rev. and Democratic state senator Clementa Pinckney, whose seat in the church was draped in black.