CHICAGO – A day after former presidents, sitting governors and local Chicago residents alike attended a vibrant, televised celebration for the late Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., the family and friends who knew him best will privately grieve the civil rights leader at his organization’s headquarters.
The private memorial service at the Rainbow PUSH Coalition’s headquarters on the South Side of Chicago will include only a few hundred attendees, who are expected to be mostly family members, allies and confidants. The homegoing will serve as a capstone to a week of services held across the country.
Recommended Videos
“I foresee tomorrow will represent everything that Rev. Jackson stood for,” said the Rev. Chauncey D. Brown, a pastor to a Chicago-area church and mentee of Jackson's. “It will include dignitaries and icons, as well as many from where the true power lies, with the people in the streets.”
Seats will be first come, first served at the morning service, according to staff.
Since his death last month, Jackson’s family and allies have honored the late reverend with commemorations, community service and demonstrations they say continue his work.
Mourners were first allowed public visitations at the Rainbow PUSH headquarters in February, giving Jackson's longtime neighbors a chance to say goodbye to the civil rights leader.
The late reverend then lay in state at the South Carolina Capitol. Jackson grew up in segregated Greenville, South Carolina. As a high schooler, he led fellow students into a protest that desegregated a local library, starting a lifetime of civil rights activism.
Services honoring Jackson in Washington, D.C., were postponed after a request for him to lie in honor at the U.S. Capitol was denied. House Republican leadership cited the precedent that only former presidents and senior generals regularly receive the privilege.
Jackson's mentees also honored his legacy by organizing on issues such as voting rights, economic inequality and political organizing in the weeks after his passing. Rainbow PUSH hosted a forum for community organizers and clergy whom Jackson mentored to discuss his impact on their careers.
On Thursday, the headquarters also hosted a series of events that celebrated Jackson's life ahead of the public celebration. Hundreds of members of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity gathered at the headquarters to honor Jackson.
Jackson's life “is a dream fulfilled," said Michael Barksdale Jr., one of the fraternity brothers who honored Jackson. A Chicago public school counselor who first met Jackson as a high school freshman, Barksdale said the PUSH Coalition awarded him a college scholarship after he worked as one of the group's local youth organizers.
“It is up to my generation now to continue that legacy of Jackson and all the civil rights dignitaries who came before,” said Barksdale, 37. “They did all of the heavy lifting, and we are going to continue to build.”
That same night, the chamber hosted a reunion for Rainbow PUSH alumni to commemorate the late reverend and his years of activism. The group included state and local lawmakers, academics, longtime organizers and former diplomats.
Carol Moseley Braun, the first Black woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate, paid her respects alongside longtime veterans of the organization who supported Jackson throughout his life. Braun, who served as a volunteer on Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign, was supported by Jackson in her successful 1992 election.
They celebrated Jackson’s life and reminisced about his dual presidential bids; his globe-trotting activism as an anti-apartheid activist and hostage negotiator; and his evangelism for a Christianity that emphasized justice for all and support for the downtrodden.
The headquarters also greeted nearly 100 progressive activists from Minnesota. The assembled groups represented civil, labor and immigrants’ rights groups who were recently thrust into the national spotlight after President Donald Trump's administration's enhanced immigration enforcement operation in the state sparked protests.
“It’s really empowering, at least for me, to see the coalition coming together and to understand the history of civil rights and human rights and immigrants’ rights,” said Yeng Her, the organizing director at the Immigrant Defense Network, one of the organizations that has protested the Trump administration in Minnesota.
The Jackson family invited the activists to Chicago to learn more about Jackson's strategies and find resources for their own organizations. Organizers met Rainbow PUSH alumni and some of Jackson's children.
The gathering was a prelude to both the private service for Jackson's family and another commemoration.
On Sunday, members of the Jackson family and many of Jackson's mentees will travel to Selma, Alabama, to commemorate the “Bloody Sunday” protest marches when civil rights activists were beaten by police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965.
Jackson himself often attended the same anniversary march.