Brown’s body lay in a black and gold casket at the Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church, topped with the St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap he was wearing when he was shot dead on Aug. 9.<\/p>\n
People jammed inside the modern red-brick church and gathered outside on Dr. Martin Luther King Drive in St. Louis for the celebration, a markedly different scene from the violent protests that rocked the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson after the shooting of the unarmed 18-year-old Brown.<\/p>\n Brown’s death has focused global attention on the state of race relations in the United States. Police and demonstrators in Ferguson clashed nightly for more than a week, with authorities coming under fire for mass arrests and the use of heavy-handed tactics and military gear.<\/p>\n The teenager’s coffin was surrounded by photos of him as a child, graduating from school and smiling in his baseball cap.<\/p>\n Spirited gospel music by a choir and horn players filled the sanctuary, and mourners clapped their hands and danced in the aisles. Readings from the Bible were met with whoops and cheers.<\/p>\n “It was real spiritual,” said Mike Montgomery, a black city employee who said he took the day off from work to attend.<\/p>\n “I usually hear more mourning at a funeral,” said Montgomery, 38. “I think the family wanted a celebration. That’s why they had the upbeat music.”<\/p>\n Printed in a program for the service were letters from his parents to their late son.<\/p>\n A letter by Michael Brown Sr. read: “I always told you I would never let nothing happen to you and that’s what hurts so much, that I couldn’t protect you.”<\/p>\n Afterwards, the funeral procession carried Brown’s casket to St. Peter’s Cemetery, a few miles from Brown’s home, where it was loaded onto a horse-drawn carriage.<\/p>\n Michael Brown Sr. cried at his son’s grave site and let out a scream before leaving. His mother arrived with a separate group. She laid her body across his coffin as she wept.<\/p>\n Call For Justice<\/strong><\/p>\n A grand jury has begun hearing evidence in the shooting and the U.S. Justice Department has opened its own investigation.<\/p>\n In a eulogy for Brown, civil rights activist Al Sharpton demanded a fair and impartial investigation into the shooting and an end to police brutality.<\/p>\n “Michael Brown does not want to be remembered for riots,” Sharpton said. “He wants to be remembered as the one that made America deal with how we’re going to police in the United States.”<\/p>\n He also called on the black community to end the kind of street violence and looting that cast Ferguson in a negative light.<\/p>\n “We have to be outraged for our disrespect for each other,” he said. “Some of us act like the definition of blackness is how low you can go.<\/p>\n “Blackness has never been about being a gangster or a thug. Blackness was no matter how low we was pushed down, we rose up anyhow,” he said.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
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