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Reverend Al Sharpton and Joe Biden eulogized George Floyd as his family and friends gathered for his Houston funeral. USA TODAY

HOUSTON With the world watching, George Floyd's hometown said goodbye Tuesday in an emotional service that celebrated Floyd's life and rang with calls to ensure that death will not bring an end of his story.

The Fountain of Praise church also rang with passionate gospel music that repeatedly brought those gathered to their feet.

And passion poured from family, friends and politicians who proclaimed their love and appreciation for Floyd, a 46-year-old whose death 15 days earlier spurred outrage, activism and a growing call for reforms aimed at police brutality and treatment toward minority citizens.

God always uses unlikely people to do his will, the Rev. Al Sharpton said.

God took an ordinary brother from the Third Ward, from the housing project, that nobody thought much about but those who knew him and loved him, Sharpton said. God took the rejected stone and made him the cornerstone of a movement that is going to change the whole wide world.

That movement, he vowed, will continue when the last TV truck is gone.

Fountain of Praise pastors Remus and Mia Wright delivered on their promise to host a foot-stomping, toe-tapping, praising God remembrance of Floyd.

In the tradition of the African American church, this will be a home-going celebration of brother Georges life, Mia Wright told more than 500 invited guests in her southwest Houston church. We may weep, we may mourn, we'll be comforted and we will ride home. That is for sure.

Pallbearers bring the casket of George Floyd into the church for his funeral on June 9, 2020, at The Fountain of Praise church in Houston. Floyd died after being restrained by Minneapolis Police officers on May 25.(Photo: Pool photo by Godofredo A. Vsquez)

Speaker after speaker said Floyds death launched a global movement, and Tuesdays funeral was widely broadcast and streamed online.

Floyd's casket, placed at the front of the church, was greeted by saluting Houston police officers as it was wheeled inside Tuesday morning.

In the pews, invited guests included political leaders and celebrities who mixed with many who knew the man called Big Floyd in Houston's Third Ward.

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Family members recalled an exuberant man a personal Superman, friend and mentor who frequently came to his family's rescue without being asked and they vowed, sometimes tearfully, to fight for the legacy of a man whose name became a rallying cry for justice.

Right now, I want justice for my brother, for my big brother, that's Big Floyd, Rodney Floyd said. Everyone is going to remember him around the world. He's going to change the world.

We must not turn away, said former Vice President Joe Biden, speaking to the church on video after having privately met with Floyd's family the day before.

We cannot leave this moment thinking we can once again turn away from racism that stings at our very soul, Biden said. Why in this nation do too many black Americans wake up knowing they could lose their life in the course of living their life?

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U.S. Rep. Al Green, D-Houston, said we have a duty, responsibility and obligation not to allow this to be like the other times black lives were unjustly taken.

We have a responsibility to each one of them to make sure that we do not walk away today after having celebrated his life and not taken the next step to ... assure the future generations that this won't happen again, Green said.

Sharpton closed his eulogy by telling Floyd to go on and get your rest now, were going to fight on.

All over the world, George, they are marching in your name. Even in a pandemic, people are out walking in the streets, Sharpton said. As we lay you to rest today, the movement won't rest until we get justice, until we have one standard of justice. Your family's going to miss you, George, but your nation is always going to remember your name.

Quincy Mason Floyd, son, of George Floyd pauses at the casket and speake with the Rev. Al Sharpton, left, during a funeral service for Floyd at The Fountain of Praise church, June 9, 2020, in Houston. (Photo: Pool photo by David J. Phillip)

After the almost four-hour service, Tiffany Cofield, 35, was near tears, overwhelmed by the knowledge that Floyd was gone but happy that the service had helped inform the world about a man who always had a sense of destiny.

He used to tell me all the time he was going to change the world, she said. I taught at Hope Academy in the Third Ward and the kids told me, You got to know Big Floyd.

He mentored a lot of the kids I taught, Cofield said. He was an icon for the Third Ward. He was just such a loving, protective person. You have to know him. He was just wonderful. I cant believe hes gone.

Floyd was taken to Houston Memorial Gardens in Pearland to be buried alongside his mother, who he called out for as he gasped for breath, lying handcuffed on a Minneapolis street on Memorial Day with a Minneapolis police officers knee on his neck, a scene captured in 8 minutes and 46 seconds of video.

Many along the routeraised a fist in salute to the hearse bearing Floyd and family members.

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For the final mile of his journey, Floyd was carried by horse-drawn carriage, his casket visible through glass walls.

Despite the heat, crowds had begun lining the procession route well before funeral services began, including Audrieka Jones, 24, who walked more than a mile from her parking spot to be near the cemetery entrance, where she was heartened to see white faces in the crowd.

Im seeing more Caucasians standing up than I ever had before, said Jones, who is black. This is a good thing. It is definitely a good thing.

Jones said she hoped the activism inspired by Floyds death signals a lasting change. His death was so unfair. It was definitely not right, she said. But I dont think he died in vain. This time, its not going to be swept under the rug.

Tinker Stewart described how it feels to be disrespected on sight.

I was a captain in the Air Force. I served in Desert Storm and Operation Just Cause, Stewart recalled. And one day I was sitting in the officers club in my civilian clothes and a lady came up to me and asked me to bring her some butter. She didnt see me as a fellow officer, she saw me as somebody whose job it was to bring her butter.

Stewart said Floyds death exposed not only the overt racism that she and others live with every day, it exposed the more subtle, but equally humiliating and infuriating, prejudice that persists.

Tuesdays funeral came one day after more than 6,000 people streamed into Fountain of Praise to view Floyd as he lay in a gold casket.

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Afterward, as nightfall brought some relief from the beating sun of a still sweltering day, hundreds of mourners Monday lit the gathering darkness with candles and cellphones on the Jack Yates High School football field where George Floyd was a star tight end on a team that played for the 1992 state championship.

Ben Crump, the attorney representing the Floyd family, addressed the candlelight vigil.

People ask me all over the world, attorney Crump, why is this different from all the other times when they kill unarmed black people unjustifiably and senselessly? Crump said. And I tell them, George Floyd is different from anything weve ever seen because not only was it a documentary of his death, it was a documentary where he narrated his death and said, `I cant breathe, I cant breathe, I cant breathe, I cant breathe, I cant breathe, I cant breathe, I cant breathe, I cant breathe.

At 8:46, the vigil, which had been put together by the Yates High School Alumni Association, fell silent.

More than 60,000 people marched in Houston in a peaceful demonstration last Tuesday.

But you should know theyre protesting for George in Paris, France, Crump said. Theyre protesting for George in London, England. Theyre protesting for George in Toronto, Canada. Theyre protesting for George in Berlin, Germany. Theyre protesting for George in Australia. Theyre protesting for George in Ghana. Theyre protesting for George all over Africa. Theyre protesting for George all over the world. For your homeboy.

On the ride over to the memorial service Monday, Jace Brown, 8, of Houston, asked his grandmother, Charlotte Moman, if George Floyd is going to be history, when we get older is he going to be there?

She said he would be, like Emmett Till.

Moman was the same age Jace is now in 1955, growing up in rural Mississippi, when Till, a black 14-year-old from Chicago who was visiting family in Money, Miss., was kidnapped, tortured and killed his body wrapped in barbed wire, tied to a 75-pound cotton gin fan and thrown in the Tallahatchie River supposedly for whistling at a white womanoutside a country store.

His murder, and the funeral in Chicago, sent shock waves across America, galvanizing the civil rights movement

Its like we repeat doing the same thing all over again, and repeating and repeating and it doesnt stop, Jace said. So like we get too fed up, like its too much.

Additional material from USA Today Network reporter John Moritz.

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Houston gives George Floyd a rousing, tearful farewell - El Paso Times