In a new essay reflecting on the killing of George Floyd and our nation’s 400-year legacy of racial brutality and prejudice, Commonwealth Fund President David Blumenthal, M.D., draws inspiration from the eulogy President Obama delivered for the nine victims of the massacre at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, almost exactly five years ago.

President Obama sang the opening stanza of the spiritual hymn “Amazing Grace” that day. “These lines have been present with me constantly during the last week,” Blumenthal writes. “They tell the story of a journey — a journey on which I believe we are launched as individuals, as institutions and, I hope, as a society.”

Read why he believes amazing grace “is within our reach.”