President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will travel to South Carolina Friday for the funeral services of Rev. Clementa Pinckney, one of nine black parishioners murdered during Bible study at Charleston’s Emanuel A.M.E. church.
President Obama will deliver the eulogy, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said. Obama said last week that he and first lady Michelle Obama knew several members of the church, including Pinckney, who was killed, along with his sister.
“To say our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families, and their community doesn’t say enough to convey the heartache and the sadness and the anger that we feel,” Obama said.
Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, said they last saw Pinckney, also a state senator legislator, less than a year ago at a prayer breakfast in Columbia.
“He was a good man, a man of faith, a man of service who carried forward Mother Emaunel’s legacy as a sacred place promoting freedom, equality, and justice for all,” the Bidens said in a statement last week.
Comments