ATLANTA — Like so many others whose names have been chanted in protests across the country after fatal encounters with the police, Rayshard Brooks has become a symbol.
At a pulpit imbued with a legacy connected to the fight for civil rights, a series of speakers lamented on Tuesday afternoon the societal forces that had steered Mr. Brooks’s life and, in their view, contributed to its end. There was the pernicious threat of racism and its many permutations, including the undertow of the criminal justice system that can become impossible to escape. And there was the deep mistrust between law enforcement and the African-American community.
“We’re here to sit with this family,” said the Rev. Dr. Raphael G. Warnock, the senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, referring to Mr. Brooks’s wife and children sitting before him. “But we would not be honest if we did not discuss what got us here in the first place.”
“This is about him,” Pastor Warnock, who is also a Democratic candidate for the United States Senate, added, “but it is much bigger than him.”
Mr. Brooks’s family, most of them dressed in white, filed into Ebenezer on Tuesday, joined by prominent pastors, elected officials, activists and celebrities who did not know Mr. Brooks when he was alive. The crowd did not fill the church, as people were spaced out six feet apart in the pews and wore masks in a sanctuary that had been closed for services since March, all because of the coronavirus. Hundreds more watched online.
The funeral combined soaring rhetoric calling for his death to be an impetus for change with quiet reflections about the life of a largely ordinary man who only became known because of how he died. Mr. Brooks, 27, was fatally shot on June 12 by the Atlanta police, in a moment when the nation was wrestling with its tangled racial history after a series of recent police killings.
The Rev. Bernice A. King, the youngest daughter of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., described how Mr. Brooks fit into the patchwork of a larger struggle. She pointed out that he was killed on the same day that the civil rights activist Medgar Evers was gunned down in 1963 and that, a year later, Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life in prison for conspiring against the white South African government.
Mr. Brooks’s mother-in-law, Rochelle Gooden, said he loved old rhythm-and-blues songs and liked to barbecue.
“He always took me as Mom,” she said, referring to how they would address each other, “and I always took him as Son. I never called him Rayshard, I called him my son.”
The funeral also invoked other African-Americans whose killings have fueled protests in recent months, including Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man who was fatally shot while jogging through a coastal Georgia neighborhood.
Mr. Arbery’s death, in late February, inspired a hate-crimes measure that passed the State Senate on Tuesday, shortly before Mr. Brooks’s funeral began. Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, a Republican, has indicated his support for it.
Mr. Brooks was killed as protests had already broken out across the country after George Floyd died in May in the custody of the Minneapolis police. The killings inflamed longstanding tensions between communities of color and law enforcement, and also expanded into a larger grappling over the racial divides that figure into almost every facet of American life.
Over generations, in moments of triumph as well as turmoil, Ebenezer Baptist Church has been where many African-Americans in Atlanta find comfort in their faith and in one another. During the fight for civil rights, it had been the pastoral home of Dr. King, becoming known as “America’s Freedom Church.”
The community gathered on Tuesday during what has emerged as another turbulent chapter for Atlanta, where the atmosphere had become especially fraught after weeks of protests.
“This happened in Atlanta, the city that’s supposed to be too busy to hate,” Ms. King said, referring to a motto repeated for decades in the city, a reflection of its sprawling ambition and place as a capital of commerce and culture for the black community. “This happened in the city known as the black mecca.”
The crowd at the funeral reflected the promise of Atlanta: in the pews were the city’s mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, who is a black woman; T.I., the rapper and activist; and Phaedra Parks, the lawyer and former “Real Housewives of Atlanta” cast member. The service was paid for by Tyler Perry, the entertainment mogul who built a 330-acre compound in the city from which he churns out movies and television shows.
Yet the funeral also showed where Atlanta had fallen short, including the systemic inequality that endures in the city and elsewhere.
Mr. Brooks was killed after two police officers were called to a Wendy’s parking lot where, the authorities said, Mr. Brooks had fallen asleep in the drive-through lane.
As the officers moved to arrest Mr. Brooks, he hit an officer, grabbed the other officer’s Taser, fired it and took off running. One of the officers, Garrett Rolfe, discharged his own Taser and reached for his 9-millimeter Glock handgun as Mr. Brooks turned and discharged the stolen Taser again. Mr. Rolfe fired, striking Mr. Brooks twice in the back.
“Rayshard Brooks wasn’t just running from the police,” Pastor Warnock said, noting Mr. Brooks’s past interactions with the criminal justice system. He was on probation and faced a return to prison if arrested that night.
“He was running from a system that makes slaves out of people,” he said. “This is much bigger than the police. This is about a whole system that cries out for renewal and reform.”
Within hours of the shooting, Mr. Rolfe was fired from the Police Department, and the city’s police chief, Erika Shields, resigned. Several days later, the Fulton County district attorney, Paul L. Howard Jr., announced that Mr. Rolfe was being charged with 11 counts, including felony murder and aggravated assault. The other officer, Devin Brosnan, who was placed on administrative duty, was charged with aggravated assault and violating his oath as an officer.
On Tuesday, the authorities said that they had arrested a woman, identified as Natalie White, who is accused of setting a fire that burned down the Wendy’s where Mr. Brooks had encountered the police.
Before his death, relatives and friends said that Mr. Brooks had been pushing toward a better place. “Your past doesn’t define you, it refines and shapes you so that you are better equipped to step into your God-given purpose,” said Ambrea Mikolajczyk, who owns a restoration and construction company where Mr. Brooks had worked. “The system kept drawing him in, grabbing ahold of him like quicksand.”
Still, those who knew Mr. Brooks remembered him for more than his troubles. He was a caring father, they said, and a dancer who tended to have more enthusiasm than ability.
After she passed a golden coffin decorated with bursts of white flowers on her way to the front of the church, Ms. Gooden, Mr. Brooks’s mother-in-law, said that his legacy would live on through his family, particularly in his three daughters.
“I look at my grandbaby right there,” she said, noting a strong resemblance. “When I look at her, I know he’s not gone.”
Richard Fausset contributed reporting.
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