Relatives said goodbye yesterday to the 18-year-old unarmed black man who was shot and killed by a police officer, remembering him as a "gentle soul" with a deep and growing faith in Christianity and ambitions that one day "the world would know his name".

The mourners filled an enormous church to remember Michael Brown – a “gentle giant,” aspiring rapper and recent high school graduate on his way to a technical college but the funeral that unfolded today was about much more than the black 18-year-old who lay in the closed coffin after being shot to death by a white police officer.