AFP, CHARLESTON: President Barack Obama was yesterday set to deliver a eulogy in Charleston for the chief pastor gunned down in a church in an apparently racially-motivated attack that shocked the nation.
Obama will deliver the remarks in the afternoon for pastor Clementa Pinckney, who was killed along with eight other African Americans during Bible study in a historic South Carolina church nine days ago.
The shooting was allegedly carried out by Dylann Roof, 21, a white supremacist.
The carnage renewed discussions about racism and hate groups in America and led to a furor over the controversial Confederate flag, which is present throughout the south but which many see as a symbol of racism. For Obama, the shooting touched a particular nerve because it overlapped with two thorny issues in his presidency gun control, which he never managed to overhaul, and racial divides.
Soon after the killings, a frustrated and angry Obama, who knew Pinckney, condemned the country's lack of action over mass shootings.
Several thousand people, including Vice President Joe Biden, are expected at the ceremony at a university in Charleston near the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church where the shooting took place. Mourners held the first funeral services Thursday for some of the nine African Americans killed.
Hundreds filed past the open coffin of Ethel Lance, 70, at a funeral home in North Charleston, ahead of an afternoon service for Sharonda Singleton, 45. Emotions ran high at the Royal Missionary Baptist Church as friends and relatives bid a final farewell to Lance, a custodian at a Charleston arts center.