Rev. Jesse Jackson’s life celebrated by Rainbow PUSH Coalition in Chicago
CHICAGO - A little over a week after his death, civil rights icon Rev. Jesse Jackson will be honored with a celebration of life in Chicago starting on Thursday.
What we know:
Jackson’s body will lie in repose at the Rainbow PUSH Coalition’s headquarters on Chicago’s South Side at 930 E. 50th Street.
Doors open to the public starting at 10 a.m. and will remain open until 9 p.m. The service will be live-streamed in the media player at the top of this story.
Family procession for Rev. Jesse Jackson to Rainbow PUSH center
A little over a week after his death, civil rights icon Rev. Jesse Jackson will be honored with a celebration of life in Chicago starting on Thursday.
Jackson will again lie in repose on Friday at the headquarters, which will also be open to the public from 10 a.m. until 9 p.m.
What's next:
The services in Chicago will precede formal services in South Carolina, where Jackson was born, and then Washington, D.C., next week, according to the Rainbow PUSH Coalition’s website.
"The outpouring of love and support received from around the globe has been abundant and deeply felt," Jackson's family members said in a recent statement.
The backstory:
Jackson, a longtime civil rights leader and former presidential candidate, had been battling a neurodegenerative disorder known as progressive supranuclear palsy for over a decade. He was initially treated for Parkinson’s syndrome, but his PSP diagnosis was confirmed last April.
A protégé of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., he broke with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the early 1970s to form Operation PUSH, initially named People United to Save Humanity, on Chicago’s South Side. In the 1980s, he also founded the National Rainbow Coalition, an organization dedicated to uniting people of all races and backgrounds.
Chicagoans mourn Jesse Jackson, remember him as a 'giant'
Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Chicago-based civil rights icon, political trailblazer, and lifelong advocate for equality who worked alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and inspired generations with his call to "never look down on anybody unless you are helping him up," has died at 84.
The two groups later merged to become today’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition, whose mission ranges from promoting minority hiring in corporate America to leading voter registration drives in communities of color.
"His life is broad enough to cover the full spectrum of what it means to be American," his eldest son, Jesse Jackson Jr ., told reporters recently. "We only ask people to come and be respectful in context of the extraordinary life he lived."