Barack Obama will fly to Charleston tomorrow to deliver the eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney, the senior pastor of Emmanuel A.M.E. Church and one of the nine victims killed in the shooting there last week. The funeral will take place at the TD Arena at the College of Charleston, a venue that seats 5,100 people. They need somewhere big to contain the grief.
A week and a day ago, Pinckney was alive. His two daughters had a father; his wife had a husband; Emmanuel A.M.E. had a leader. Now that he is dead, people will gather to do what they have done for millennia: to remember, to mourn, to say goodbye.
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