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CHICAGO - A line of mourners streamed through a Chicago auditorium Thursday to pay final respects to the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. as cross-country memorial services began in the city the late civil rights leader called home.
What we know:
Doors opened to the public starting at 10 a.m. and will remain open until 9 p.m. The service is being 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 during the same hours.
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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.
On Thursday, family members wiped away tears as the casket was brought into the stately brick building. Flowers lined the sidewalks where people waiting to enter watched a large video screen playing excerpts of Jackson's notable speeches. Inside, Jackson's children, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and the Rev. Al Sharpton were among those who stood by the open casket to shake hands and hug those coming to view the body of Jackson, dressed in a suit and blue shirt and tie.
"The challenge for us is that we've got to make sure that all he lived for was not in vain," Sharpton told reporters. "Dr. King's dream and Jesse Jackson's mission now falls on our shoulders. We've got to stand up and keep it going."
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.
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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."