CHARLESTON, South Carolina
Hundreds of mourners gathered Thursday in front of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church for a memorial service for one of the nine people gunned down during a Bible study meeting in Charleston last week.
People from across the country paid their respects to Rev. Clementa Pinckney as his open casket was placed in the historical church.
Under tight security, many from the black community were joined by those who had traveled from other cities to line up in front of the building to see Pinckney’s coffin.
While people gathered in front of the church, members of the Sons of Allen ministry appeared a block down, and sang the hymn We Are Soldiers: "We are soldiers in the army, we have to fight, although we have to cry. We have to hold up the bloodstained banner. We have to hold it up until we die."
Pinckney's funeral will be held tomorrow.
President Barack Obama is scheduled to deliver the eulogy at Friday's funeral and will meet the families of some of the other victims.
Earlier on Thursday, funerals were held for two other victims of the attack -- Ethel Lance and Sharonda Coleman-Singleton.
Dylann Roof, 21, a white man, has been charged with shooting the nine people who were killed during Bible study in the basement of the church on June 17.
Following the shootings, President Obama said in a podcast interview with broadcaster Marc Maron that the “legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives, you know, that casts a long shadow, and that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on.”
