President Obama Sings ‘Amazing Grace’ During Eulogy For Church Shooting Victim Rev. Clementa Pinckney [Video]

President Barack Obama sang “Amazing Grace” during a 40-minute eulogy for church shooting victim and friend, Rev. Clementa Pinckney, in North Charleston, South Carolina, according to Business Insider.

Thousands of mourners gathered in song and sorrow at the Charleston college arena at 3 a.m. Friday. Laid to rest was an honorable pastor and public servant who was shot dead – along with eight others – on June 17 by 21-year-old Dylann Roof.

Obama was accompanied by his wife, Michelle, in South Carolina where he stood before 5,000 people at a college arena, delivering his moving speech, reported CNN.

“We are here today to remember a man of God who lived by faith,” Obama started the eulogy. “They were still living by faith when they died.”

“Blinded by hatred, the alleged killer could not see the grace surrounding Reverend Pinckney and that Bible study group. The light of love that shone as they opened the church doors and invited a stranger to join in their prayer circle. The alleged killer could have never anticipated the way the families of the fallen would respond when they saw him in court, in the midst of unspeakable grief, with words of forgiveness. He couldn’t imagine that.”

“For too long we were blind to the pain that the Confederate flag stirred in too many of our citizens. It’s true, a flag did not cause these murders. But as people from all walks of life, Republicans and Democrats now acknowledge — including Gov. Haley, whose recent eloquence on the subject is worthy of praise — we all have to acknowledge the flag has always represented more than just ancestral pride,” he continued.

“For many, black and white, that flag was a reminder of systemic oppression and racial subjugation. We see that now removing the flag from this state’s Capitol would not be an act of political correctness, it would not be an insult to the valor of Confederate soldiers, it would simply be an acknowledgment 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. It would be one step in an honest accounting of America’s history. A modest but meaningful balm for so many unhealed wounds. It would be an expression of the amazing changes that have transformed this state and this country for the better because of the work of so many people of good will. People of all races striving to form a more perfect union. By taking down that flag we express God’s grace.”

Obama also spoke candidly about gun control and race relations, saying “It would be a betrayal of everything Reverend Pinckney stood for, I believe, if we allowed ourselves to slip into a comfortable silence again.”

Barack Obama ended the eulogy with a song we all know too well, “Amazing Grace,” before naming all nine of the victims that were gunned down at Emanuel AME church in South Carolina.

[Image courtesy of Joe Raedle/Getty Images]