President Obama led thousands of mourners at the funeral for the South Carolina pastor shot dead in amass murder inside a Charlestown, South Carolina church. The president gave a long, emotional eulogy that repeteadly brought the congregation to its feet. NY1's Ruschell Boone filed the following report.

He was there to deliver the eulogy, but on Friday, President Obama gave mourners a lot more than just parting words; he sang “Amazing Grace.”

In the tradition of the black church, Obama remembered Pastor Clementa Pinckney and the other victims of last week's racially motivated shooting at Emmanuel AME Church.

“For too long we have been blind to the way past injustices continue to shape the present,” Obama said.

After paying tribute the victims, the nation's first black president used the platform to address America's tangled history of race relations. He waded into the debate over the Confederate flag, praising the bipartisan movement to remove it from government properties - an effort that took root after the Charleston murders.

“We all have to acknowledge that the flag has always represented more than just ancestral pride,” Obama said. “For many, black and white, that flag is a reminder of systemic oppression.”

The thousands of mourners also heard from Reverend Pinckney's relatives and friends who spoke about his life.

“He was a man of purpose, a man of conviction, a man of passion. He was a man of God,” said Reverend Dr. Kylon Jerome Middleton.

Pinckney was just 18 when he became a pastor and only 23 when he became a public servant. He was a longtime State Senator when he died. Family members said the legacy of all the victims will be one of faith and forgiveness and the public should show forgiveness as well.

“Let us remember the sacrifice of the nine of my brothers and sisters, to remember the words of Jesus Christ on Calvary Hill when he said ‘Forgive them; for they know not what they doeth,’” Pinckney’s cousin Ronnie Johnson said.

But what they don't want people to do is forget.