A librarian and the eldest and youngest of the parishioners are mourned

A day after President Obama called on Americans to end the deep hold of racial discrimination in the country, the lives of three more victims of the church massacre here were celebrated and their deaths transformed Saturday into a clarion call for change.

“I am sorry this happened on my watch,” Gov. Nikki R. Haley said at the funeral service for Cynthia Graham Hurd, 54, a librarian and housing rights advocate, “but we will make this right. We will make this right.”

Speaker after speaker walked to the altar of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church – where services were held Saturday for Hurd and Tywanza Sanders, 26, and his aunt, Susie Jackson, 87, all longtime members. Each speaker talked about the powerful example the victims had set not just in their daily lives but in their deaths.

Greenville, S.C., native the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson and others said the deaths of the “Emanuel 9,” as the victims are being called, had joined the pantheon of civil rights touchstones, including the killing of four girls in the church bombing in Birmingham in 1963 and the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. of Charleston described how Hurd had traded her college degree in math for a career devoted to books, and helped thousands of people embrace learning and reading. He said her gifts would multiply in death.

“Her death will lead to change, and Cynthia Hurd will be helping millions,” he said as he talked about the consciousness-raising that had spread across the country.

According to a pamphlet given at their joint funeral, Sanders died trying to protect Jackson, his aunt, and Felicia Sanders, his mother who survived the shooting, the Associated Press reported. Sanders’ last words were to the shooter, the pamphlet said.

“You don’t have to do this, we are no harm to you,” Sanders is alleged to have said, followed by, “where is my Aunt Susie, I’ve got to get to my Aunt Susie.”

Sanders until recently lived in Columbia, recently graduating from Allen University.

Sanders and his aunt were the youngest and oldest killed.

Nearly two weeks ago, on June 17, a young white man walked into the first floor of the Emanuel Church, where a Bible study group was discussing a verse in the Gospel of Mark. After sitting with the group for about an hour, he took out a gun and killed nine people. Law enforcement authorities have called the shootings a hate crime. Dylann Roof, 21, has been charged with nine counts of murder in the shootings.

During Saturday’s nearly four-hour service, Hurd’s relatives and friends spoke of her “beautiful eyes,” her outspokenness, her determination and, Haley said, her motto: “Be kinder than necessary.”

The services for the victims were so full that an overflow room was set up in a nearby church. Hundreds waited in line to try to get inside, and Red Cross workers passed out water bottles.

Despite the heat, the chorus sang hymn after hymn. And yet again the Rev. Norvel Goff, the president elder at Emanuel, set aside his own exhaustion and grief, and stood in the pulpit, guiding the mourners through grief and jubilation.

For this, he was praised repeatedly, even by Haley, who said that he is so dynamic that every time she walks out of a funeral service, wearying as they are, “I am convinced I’m going to become an AME member.”

A onetime ice-cream server at Swensen’s downtown, Hurd went on to college and graduate school, knowing a good education was a requirement in her family. But her love of books was profound. Her brother, Malcolm Graham, a former state senator in North Carolina, said she plunged into the encyclopedia after the family bought a set from a traveling salesman.

Jackson reminded members of her family that their work is not over. They must now work to keep their memories alive.

“God has more for families to do than just mourn,” he said.

The Civil War may have started in South Carolina, Jackson said, but now, “maybe she can end the Confederate War right here.”

Jackson told The Associated Press that it is “really time for a new South.”

“This was the most traumatic hit since Dr. Martin Luther King was killed 50 years ago. This could be a defining moment for the American dream for all its people,” Jackson said. “This is a resurrection. Look around, there are white and black people together.”