Video: Watch President Obama Sing "Amazing Grace" while Delivering Eulogy For the Murdered Charleston Reverend

President Barack Obama yesterday delivered the eulogy for Clementa Pinckney, Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church’s reverend, who was shot dead along with eight fellow revelers. The country’s first black president has been blasted over the last six and a half years for not acknowledging his cape, or at least not making ours any easier to bear, but this was a sensational, spectacular destruction of black lives, and so it made sense he was there, speaking. For about 40 minutes, he addressed Pinckney’s family, and his flock, the country, and the world. At one point the president started speaking about Roof directly, and the easily imaginable theft of lives because they were blacks.

“We do not know whether the killer of Reverend Pinckney and eight others knew of all this history. But he surely sensed the meaning of his violent act,” he said. “It was an act that drew on a long history of bombs, and arson, and shots fired at churches. Not random, but as a means of control. A way to terrorize and oppress. An act that he imagined would incite fear and recrimination, violence and suspicion. An act that he assumed would deepen divisions that would trace back to our nation’s original sin.

“Oh,” he said, the faint traces of a chuckle bubbling deep in his chest. “But God works in mysterious ways.”

In that moment, I again thought of my blackness. For about 40 minutes, to remember a dead preacher, For about 40 minutes, he spoke, as members of Pinckney’s family and flock urged him on. He spoke about being black, about the pain and the fear and the uncertainty and the heartbreak that floods every black heart, every day, and he spoke about it unflinchingly, with pride, in front of anyone and everyone who was watching. I got chills, and then I started to smile. I was back in church, joyfully reveling in the word of a God I do not know, and in a community I’ve never visited, and in the very blackness that could be my undoing. I wanted to laugh out loud and stand up, but something kept me seated, watching this church service in another room.
Obama spoke the words, “amazing grace.” And then he began to sing.
Watch the US President  deliver his touching Eulogy below: