WASHINGTON (NNPA) – When President Obama returns to Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C. Friday to eulogize Rev. Clementa Pinckney, it will cap a period in which he has become increasingly outspoken on race, even uttering the N-word to make a point about the slow pace of progress in race relations.

Commenting on the Charleston tragedy on June 18, President Obama said, “The fact that this took place in a black church obviously also raises questions about a dark part of our history. This is not the first time that black churches have been attacked. And we know that hatred across races and faiths pose a particular threat to our democracy and our ideals.”

He quoted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. following the 1963 bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.

“The good news is I am confident that the outpouring of unity and strength and fellowship and love across Charleston today, from all races, from all faiths, from all places of worship indicates the degree to which those old vestiges of hatred can be overcome. That, certainly, was Dr. King’s hope just over 50 years ago, after four little girls were killed in a bombing in a black church in Birmingham, Alabama,” Obama recalled. READ MORE