ALBANY — They laid Ready to rest on Thursday.

More than 800 mourners jammed the sanctuary and basement and spilled out onto the street of the Metropolitan New Testament Mission Baptist Church in Arbor Hill for Thursday's funeral service of 19-year-old Nah-Cream Moore, who lived in the South End and worked as a custodian.

"Ready" was spelled out in 3-foot-tall letters fashioned from white and red roses next to his white, open casket.

The service was a raw mix of gangland-style, hard-edged hip-hop and Southern Baptist gentility and sweetness, underscoring intergenerational fault lines along the city's troubled urban core.

"We all just miss him," said Sheila Shay, 19, who met Moore at Hackett Middle School and said they sometimes skipped school together. "He was funny and outgoing and a big flirt. We've just got to love each other while we're all still here."

Her friend Nish, also 19 and the mother of a 2-year-old, wondered if she'd be burying her son at 19.

"I can't do this no more," Nish said, wiping away tears.

Mourners remembered Moore as pictured on the front of the funeral program: a smooth-faced youth in a Yankees cap known for his easy smile, sense of humor and usual answer to "How's it going?" — "I'm good" — drawing a chuckle of recognition from the crowd.

But his life had a darker side.

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Moore died Dec. 29 after being shot three times in the torso by police following a traffic stop and scuffle on South Pearl Street. Police said he had a .22-caliber handgun. An Albany County grand jury is investigating the shooting.

"We're not here to reflect on his criminal history, but to remember that a mother lost her son and that a community is grieving," said Anquan McLean, a cousin of Moore's. "He's not just a criminal. He's a human being."

But it was hard to look past the fact that Moore's death was a grim reminder of the toll of the senseless violence of the streets and a tragic end to the promise of the Great Migration between 1915 and 1970, when nearly 6 million rural Southern blacks migrated to northern and western industrial cities in search of a better life.

One branch of Moore's family, the Woodards, are related to the Woodard clan who migrated with other black families from Shubuta, Miss., in the 1920s and 1930s. They settled in small bungalows they built themselves on farmsteads along Rapp Road on the city's western edge.

They were former sharecroppers, one generation removed from slavery, who fled the terror of lynchings and degradation of the Jim Crow South.

The Shubuta families followed the Rev. Louis Parson, who convinced his church members to relocate and re-invent themselves.

That was a world away from the thug's life that Moore knew.

He had served nearly two years in state prison and had been on parole through 2013. He was wanted for a parole violation and was a suspect in a robbery on Alexander Street, according to police.

In the funeral program, one of the young men listed as an honorary pallbearer, Shahied Oliver, 15, was killed in 2007 in a gang-linked slaying at a crowded Arbor Hill birthday party.

Another honorary pallbearer, Raquad Graham, 20, was shot in the abdomen on Dec. 18 in the bar of Simply Fish and Jazz on South Pearl Street.

On Thursday, Moore's mother, Davina "ShaCreama" Woodard and family members received guests in front of Moore's open white casket during two hours of calling hours in the church.

Church matrons in white nurse's uniforms and white gloves resembled angels of mercy as they weaved silently through the crowd, passing out tissues and offering a soothing touch on the shoulder to mourners overcome with grief.

The emotional, hourlong service included teenage girls wailing, a choir swaying to the rhythm of spirituals and a minister who admonished apparent gang members in the audience for their black-and-white OGK, or Original Gangsta Killas, bandanas, droopy jeans and dead-end lives on the street.

"Young men, it's time to pull the pants up," thundered the Rev. Willie Stovall, pastor of Mount Olive Baptist Church. "Instead of letting your pants hang beneath your behinds, get something in your minds. You're not lost yet. Don't let nobody tell you you're lost. You've still got breath in your body."

His stern rebuke drew a few claps and murmurs of assent from the elders at the service. Stovall's words underscored a palpable tension between the scowling young men with dreadlocks and oversized baseball caps and well-dressed older women with fashionable hats and men in two-toned shoes.

"If you're on the wrong road, doing the wrong thing, you're not lost yet," Stovall said, using an analogy to having a GPS while driving. "Remember, you're not lost yet. Just recalculate your destination."

A few young people wore commemorative T-shirts that pictured Moore, thin and bare-chested, clutching a fistful of $20 bills and making a hand sign that appeared to be a gang symbol.

"He lived like a superstar. He was a little man who played big," said Tommy Fundz, who played pickup basketball with Moore and sometimes drank with him at the LA Lounge, a bar at 445 S. Pearl St. A few paces away, Moore was shot and died on the street.

A large makeshift memorial filled the sidewalk with dozens of votive candles, balloons, teddy bears with black-and-white bandanas as well as scores of empty alcohol bottles, many with personal inscriptions written on them.

On a wooden fence behind the memorial, many had scrawled heartfelt sentiments.

"Love & Miss You Ready. You are in a better place. Watch over me! Tiffany."

"You were my brother, my best friend and I don't know what I'm going to do without u. I love you & IMU. Siah."

"RIP Ready. Why Da Gud Die Yung. You will be missed. Jazzy."

Back across town, outside the church, private security patrolled the premises, but there was no obvious police presence and no signs of any violence. Yet anger against cops bubbled just below the surface and erupted briefly when a man on a bike rode past and shouted obscenities aimed at police.

"Cops killin' blacks is an old story," a middle-aged black man said after the funeral. "It's been going on a long time from Mississippi to Albany. And it ain't gonna change anytime soon."

The church's senior pastor, Rev. Damone P. Johnson, took the opportunity of his eulogy to remind the gang-bangers that it was not too late to choose peace over violence and faith over desperation.

"You won't find peace through drugs or Jack Daniels or bling-bling," he said. "That all can be taken away. God gives you the peace that can't be taken away from you. Y'all will still have problems, but there's nothing like God's peace."

In the street after the service, hundreds gathered, the thugs and the elders, united in their grief.

The words of the gospel song "We'll Understand It Better By and By" reverberated in the air.

Female choir members in crisp white and blue robes sang:

"Trials dark on every hand, and we cannot understand,

All the ways that God would lead us to that blessed promised land,

But He'll guide us with His eye and we'll follow till we die,

For we'll understand it better by and by."

A procession of cars followed a hearse from the Garland Brothers Funeral Home to Moore's burial.

They were going to Graceland.

Reach Paul Grondahl at 454-5623 or pgrondahl@timesunion.com.