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

CHICAGO– A day after former presidents, sitting governors and Chicagoans attended a lively televised celebration honoring 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 Rainbow PUSH Coalition headquarters on Chicago’s South Side will have only a few hundred attendees, most of whom are expected to be family members, allies and confidants. The return home will serve as the conclusion of a week of services held across the country.

“I anticipate that tomorrow will represent everything that Rev. Jackson stood for,” said the Rev. Chauncey D. Brown, pastor of a Chicago-area church and Jackson’s mentee. “It will include dignitaries and icons, as well as many people representing the real power, along with the people in the streets.”

Seating will be on a first-come, first-served basis during morning service, according to staff.

Since his death last month, Jackson’s family and allies have honored the late reverend with memorials, community service and protests 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 reverend was later laid in state at the South Carolina Capitol. Jackson grew up in segregated Greenville, South Carolina. As a high school student, he led his classmates in a protest that desegregated a local library, starting a life of civil rights activism.

Services honoring Jackson in Washington, D.C., were postponed after a request for him to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol was denied. House Republican leaders cited precedent that only former presidents and high-ranking 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 following his death. Rainbow PUSH hosted a forum for community organizers and clergy that Jackson mentored to discuss its impact on their careers.

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

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

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

That same evening, the chamber hosted a reunion of 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 tribute alongside longtime veterans of the organization who supported Jackson throughout his life. Braun, who served as a volunteer during Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign, was endorsed by Jackson during his successful election in 1992.

They celebrated Jackson’s life and remembered his two presidential bids; his globe-trotting activism as an anti-apartheid activist and hostage negotiator; and his evangelization for a Christianity that emphasized justice for all and support for the oppressed.

The headquarters also hosted nearly 100 progressive activists from Minnesota. The assembled groups represented civil rights, labor and immigrant groups that have recently been thrust into the national spotlight after President Donald Trump’s stepped-up immigration enforcement operation in the state sparked protests.

“It’s really encouraging, at least for me, to see the coalition come together and understand the history of civil rights, human rights and immigrant rights,” said Yeng Her, organizing director of the Immigrant Defense Network, one of the organizations protesting the Trump administration in Minnesota.

The Jackson family invited activists to Chicago to learn more about Jackson’s strategies and 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 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 in which civil rights activists were beaten by police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965.

Jackson himself often attended the same anniversary march.