Rev. Jesse Jackson’s life to be 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 procession to the headquarters will begin at 7:30 a.m. and will be live-streamed in the media player at the top of this story.

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 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. 

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.