Rev. Jesse Jackson’s family gathers for a private homegoing after a president-filled celebration

chicago — A day after former presidents, governors and local Chicagoans alike attended a colorful, televised celebration for the late Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., family and friends who knew him best will privately mourn the civil rights leader at his organization’s headquarters.

The private memorial service at the Rainbow PUSH Coalition headquarters on Chicago’s South Side will include only a few hundred attendees, most of whom are expected to be family members, allies and associates. The homecoming will be the culmination of a week of services being held across the country.

“I expect tomorrow will represent everything that Rev. Jackson stood for,” said the Rev. Chauncey D. Brown, a Chicago-area church pastor and a disciple of Jackson. “It will include prominent figures and icons, as well as many from where the real power lies, with the people on the streets.”

Seats will be first come, first served for morning service, according to staff.

Since his death last month, Jackson’s family and allies have honored the late pastor with memorial ceremonies, community service and demonstrations that they say continue his work.

Mourners were first allowed public visits at Rainbow PUSH headquarters in February, giving Jackson’s longtime neighbors a chance to say goodbye to the civil rights leader.

The late state priest then lay in state at the South Carolina State Capitol. Jackson grew up in an isolated area of ​​Greenville, South Carolina. As a high school student, he led fellow students in a protest that led to the desegregation of a local library, and began a life of civil rights activism.

Services honoring Jackson in Washington, D.C., were postponed after a request for him to lie in his honor at the U.S. Capitol was denied. House Republican leadership cited the precedent that only former presidents and top generals regularly receive this privilege.

Jackson’s interns also honored his legacy by organizing on issues such as voting rights, economic inequality, and political organizing in the weeks following his death. Rainbow PUSH hosted a forum for community organizers and clergy mentored by Jackson to discuss his influence on their careers.

On Thursday, the residence also hosted a series of events that celebrated Jackson’s life before the public celebration. Hundreds of members of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity gathered at headquarters to honor Jackson.

Michael Barksdale Jr., one of the brothers who honored Jackson, said Jackson’s life was “a dream come true.” Barksdale, a public school counselor in Chicago, who first met Jackson when he was a freshman in high school, said the PUSH coalition awarded him a college scholarship after he served as one of the group’s local youth organizers.

“It’s up to my generation now to carry on the legacy that Jackson left and all the great civil rights figures who came before,” said Barksdale, 37. “They’ve done all the heavy lifting, and we’re going to keep building.”

That same night, the chamber hosted a Rainbow PUSH alumni reunion to commemorate the late pastor and his years of activism. The group included state and local legislators, academics, longtime organizers and former diplomats.

Carol Moseley Braun, the first black woman elected to the U.S. Senate, paid her respects along with veterans of the organization who supported Jackson throughout his life. Brown, who worked as a volunteer for Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign, supported Jackson in her successful 1992 election.

They celebrated Jackson’s life and recalled his dual presidential candidacies. his global activism as an anti-apartheid activist and hostage negotiator; And his preaching of Christianity, which emphasizes justice for all and support for the oppressed.

The headquarters also received nearly 100 progressive activists from Minnesota. The gathered groups represent human rights, labor and immigrant groups that have recently been in 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 come together and understand the history of civil rights, human rights and immigrant rights,” said Ying Hir, organizing director of the Immigrant Defense Network, one of the organizations that protested the Trump administration in Minnesota.

The Jackson family invited activists to Chicago to learn more about Jackson’s strategies and to find resources for their own organizations. Organizers met with Rainbow PUSH alumni and some of Jackson’s children.

The gathering was a prelude to both a private service for the Jackson family and other remembrances.

On Sunday, members of Jackson’s family and many of Jackson’s students 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.