Eulogy for slain reverend
The funeral was for Reverend Clementa Pinckney, 41, also a state senator and one of nine people shot dead during bible study in the Mother Emanuel church in Charleston, S.C., by a 21-year-old white male who posted racist rants online. Before shooting Pinckney and his eight congregants, the gunman had prayed with the group for as much as an hour.
The president began by speaking with passion of Pinckney, a man he knew, of the great history of the church he died in and of race in America. His address is being reported by media there, and by some of the 5,500 in attendance, as being more like a sermon than a speech.
Initially when he broke into the song long-associated with the struggle of African-Americans for equality and justice in the U.S., he sang alone. However, he was soon joined by church ministers in behind him, by the organist and by the crowd.
Once the hymn — written in 1779 by John Newton, a former slave trader who converted to Christianity and renounced slavery — was finished, Obama read the names of all nine victims. After he read each name the crowd responded with a resounding “yes.”
Race relations in U.S.
Prior to the singing of “Amazing Grace” Obama spoke to the assembled about race relations in his country, urging America to use the terrible tragedy to find a way to bridge race relations in the United States.
He spoke of the contentious confederate flag, the flag the gunman had posed with online, and said it was “a reminder of systemic oppression and racial subjugation” and called for the flag to be lowered from the grounds of South Carolina’s State House.
“For many, black and white, that flag was a reminder of systemic oppression and racial subjugation,” Obama said of the flag. “Removing the flag from this state’s capital would not be an act of political correctness. It would not an insult to the valour of Confederate soldiers.
“It would simply be acknowledgement that the cause for which they fought, the cause of slavery, was wrong. The imposition of Jim Crow after the Civil War, the resistance to civil rights for all people was wrong,” he added.
“It would be one step in an honest accounting of America’s history, a modest but meaningful balm for so many unhealed wounds.”
