CHARLESTON, S.C. – President Barack Obama brought a crowd 5,500 mourners to their feet and led them in singing “Amazing Grace” in an act of defiance Friday against the hatred that fueled the killings of nine African-Americans at the legendary Mother Emanuel church a block and a half away — a eulogy that was also a call to action to battle the systemic racism that he said the attack must force America to confront.

He was, preachers who followed him said, “the Reverend President.”


Children left in poverty, dilapidated schools, a criminal justice system in need of reform, denied voting rights, black men who don’t get called back for job interviews: this is what the white supremacist killing African-Americans in a church, a place Obama said should be “inviolate” for the community, should remind the country of.

The Confederate flag — “we all have to acknowledge that the flag has always represented more than ancestral pride,” Obama said bluntly — must come down. That, though, is just the very beginning of what needs to be done.

“By taking down that flag, we express God’s grace,” Obama said, giving his eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney. “But I don’t think God wants us to stop there.”

“For too long,” Obama called out to the crowd at one point, talking about the legacy of racism. “Too long!” the crowd called back.

Dylann Roof, the shooter, “drew on the long history of bombs and arson and shots fired at churches — not random, but as a means to control. A way to terrorize and oppress.”

But, Obama said, the faith of Charleston and America has rebuffed him.

“God works in mysterious ways,” Obama said. “He didn’t know he was being used by God.”

Entering to cheers and applause in the College of Charleston’s TD Arena, Obama immediately joined the clapping as the gospel choir sang.

A minute later, he and first lady Michelle Obama leapt to their feet — “we have changed the TD Arena into a sanctuary” one reverend said at the start of the funeral — as the first chords of the gospel hymnal “It Is Well” began to play.

This has been an intense and strange month for the White House, ping-ponging between moments of celebration and mourning, tangled in congressional wrangling over fast-track trade authority and anguish over the death of Beau Biden — and then the shooting last week that both killed a rising political star Obama knew personally and ripped open the racial tension in America in a new, painful way.

That mix was captured Thursday night, as the president dug into his eulogy for Pinckney after a day of celebrating the Supreme Court sealing Obamacare, and Friday morning, as Obama was in the Oval Office finishing the eulogy for the state senator when senior adviser Valerie Jarrett called to tell him the high court had legalized same-sex marriage.

Obama celebrated justice arriving “like a thunderbolt” in the Rose Garden on Friday morning, then minutes later, boarded the helicopter that took him to Air Force One for the flight that took him and the first lady here.

“It’s been a significant morning. It’s been a significant couple of days. And it’s certainly been a significant month. For not only the president and the administration but for the country,” White House principal deputy press secretary Eric Schultz told reporters traveling on the plane with Obama.

The mood at the “home-going service” in Charleston was itself a mix of celebration and mourning: brokenhearted memories and reflections of rooms empty without Pinckney, but cheers and applause about the life he led and the example he set.

“His sacrifice must lead to reconciliation,” said South Carolina state Sen. Gerald Malloy, a close friend of Pinckney, who called the slain leader “the conscience of the Senate” in Columbia.

The spirit of forgiveness and peace that’s defined Charleston in the last week ran through every speech, even when mentioning the shooter, white supremacist Dylann Roof.

“Someone should have told the young man,” said John Richard Bryant, the senior bishop of AME. “He wanted to start a race war. But he came to the wrong place.”

“I feel robbed, cheated, and cut short,” the reverend’s wife, Jennifer Benjamin Pinckney, wrote in an essay in the program for the funeral. “I feel badly that our girls will never have their father to watch them grow. But I am thankful for one consolation, that your life was not in vain.”

The shooting, Obama said, is “a pain that cuts that much deeper because it happened in a church” — this church in particular, Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, whose history runs from the Underground Railroad to the Civil Rights movement to organizing for jobs and justice today. Mother Emanuel, as it is known, is a sacred place, “not just for blacks, not just for Christians but for every American who cares about the steady expansion of rights and human dignity.”

The Obamas were joined by a congressional delegation led by House Speaker John Boehner, who came via his first-ever flight with Obama on Air Force One. Vice President Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden arrived separately on Thursday evening. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott also joined, as did Rep. Jim Clyburn, the dean of the state’s congressional delegation.

Obama sings Amazing Grace

Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic front-runner, also attended, sitting in the front row of the funeral, her head often swaying back and forth as the gospel choir sang.

The arena was at fire-marshal capacity. Outside, the streets were packed, despite the oppressive heat. In front of Mother Emanuel on the sidewalk on Calhoun Street, named for the proto-secessionist John C. Calhoun, police officers alternate between crowd control and taking flowers from the crowd to add to those already there. “Ain’t It Good / To Be Loved By God,” read a plaque plastered into the wall along the stairs that Roof took into the building last Wednesday night, saying he was there for Bible study but packing an automatic weapon.

Among the makeshift displays are hand-painted portraits of the nine victims, with Pinckney’s showing him smiling.

“He stood in the pulpit of his church and said his part,” reads the text alongside. “We thank you God for all who come here seeking to expand their horizons and seek to learn more about what our country is made of and what makes us who we are as a people and a country.”

Rev. Jesse Jackson, back in his home state of South Carolina and standing in front of the church Friday morning, said there’s an important difference between last week’s motivated shootings and the killings of black men by white police officers that have exposed so much racial tension in America over the past year.

“There’s power in innocent blood. Honoring suffering is redemptive. These martyrs have transformative power,” Jackson said. “But will we now embrace the agenda of Rev. Pinckney the marcher or the martyr? The marcher was fighting to reduce access to guns. He was fighting for more access to health care for poor people. He was fighting for Medicaid.”

“It’s not just about bringing the flag down. It’s bringing the Confederate agenda down,” Jackson said.

Obama being the first African-American president still carries immense power at times like these, Jackson said.

“His coming is a big thing: It says there’s a flow of good news in America,” Jackson said. Even though, he added: “There’s an undercurrent.”

Now is the call to act that cannot and must not be ignored, Obama said in his eulogy.

“Every time something like this happens, someone says we should have a conversation about race,” Obama said. “We talk a lot about race. There’s no shortcut. We don’t need more talk.”