There are few figures in American public life whose passing can draw three former presidents to Chicago on a Friday morning in the middle of a war. Rev. Jesse Jackson was one of them. On Friday, March 6, former Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Joe Biden arrived together at the House of Hope megachurch on Chicago's Far South Side, joining former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, former Vice President Kamala Harris, and thousands of ordinary Americans who had waited hours in line — some through the remnants of a spring storm — for the chance to say goodbye to one of the most consequential civil rights leaders in the nation's history.
Jackson, who died in February at 84 after a years-long battle with progressive supranuclear palsy — a neurodegenerative condition similar to Parkinson's disease — spent more than six decades at the center of the American struggle for racial equity, economic justice, and political inclusion. He marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma and stood beside him in Memphis on the night King was assassinated. He ran for president in 1984 and again in 1988, becoming the first Black candidate to win multiple presidential primary contests, and forever redefining what was possible in American political life. He negotiated the release of American hostages in Syria, Cuba, and Yugoslavia when few believed diplomacy was possible. He built Rainbow PUSH Coalition — an organization dedicated to expanding voting rights and economic opportunities for marginalized Americans — into a lasting institution on Chicago's South Side, the community that shaped him.
Obama's tribute was the one that most visibly moved the 10,000-person crowd. He recalled watching a young Jesse Jackson in a 1984 Democratic presidential debate and feeling, for the first time, that someone who looked like him could belong in any room in America. "When that debate was over, I turned off that TV, and I thought the same thing that I know a lot of people thought, even if they didn't want to admit it: that in his idea, and his platform, in his analysis, in his intelligence, Jesse hadn't just held his own. He had owned that stage," Obama said. He also addressed the current political moment: "It's hard to hope when every day you wake up to things you just didn't think were possible. Each day we're told to fear each other, to turn on each other and that some Americans count more than others."
One of the most emotionally devastating speeches came not from a politician but from NBA Hall of Famer Isiah Thomas, who grew up in poverty on the same South Side streets Jackson walked. Thomas described first meeting Jackson as a child, when his family was relying on a soup kitchen for food — and how Jackson looked him in the eye and told him he was somebody. "I am! Somebody!" became, of course, the rallying call that Jackson taught to schoolchildren across America for generations. When Thomas finished, there was not a dry eye in the building.
The final service on Saturday took place at Rainbow PUSH Coalition headquarters at 930 E. 50th Street in Kenwood, where Stevie Wonder performed "They Won't Go When I Go." Jackson's daughter Santita sang "Troubles of the World." Comedian Chris Tucker brought brief, needed laughter to the room with a story about coincidentally flying with Jackson to a funeral and receiving from the reverend himself advice about slowing down to notice the details of life. By Saturday afternoon, Rev. Jesse Jackson's casket had been carried to a hearse and driven to Oak Woods Cemetery, where he was laid to rest. He is survived by his wife Jacqueline, their five children, and a nation that is still working out how to carry forward the ideals he gave his life to advance.