Before the speeches, a choir sang as attendees photographed a large panel emblazoned with one of Jackson\u2019s mantras \u201ckeep hope alive\u201d.<\/p>\n
A blue-lit image of Jackson was projected on a giant screen behind an altar.<\/p>\n
Jackson, who died on February 17, was a close associate of Martin Luther King jnr in the 1960s and remained a prominent voice of African Americans on the national stage for more than six decades.<\/p>\n
In 1960, he participated in his first sit-in, in Greenville, South Carolina, and then joined Alabama\u2019s Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights marches in 1965, where he caught King\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n
Jackson, a Baptist minister, later emerged as a mediator and envoy on several notable international fronts.<\/p>\n
He became a prominent advocate for ending apartheid in South Africa and in the 1990s served as presidential special envoy to Africa for Bill Clinton.<\/p>\n
Missions to free US prisoners took him to Syria, Iraq and Serbia.<\/p>\n
He founded the Rainbow Push Coalition, a Chicago-based non-profit organisation focused on social justice and political activism, in 1996.<\/p>\n
He is survived by his wife and six children.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before the speeches, a choir sang as attendees photographed a large panel emblazoned with one of Jackson\u2019s mantras…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317414,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[19053,17704,1975,5660,81708,26501,171952,19067,2178,2740,4999,47963,42,72471,30641,2537,171951,4507,19872,43,16941,10142,31472,2572,12718,40,38,41,39,20838,2179],"class_list":["post-317413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-activist","tag-assault","tag-at","tag-attacks","tag-barack","tag-civil","tag-conducting","tag-democratic","tag-donald","tag-former","tag-friday","tag-harder","tag-headlines","tag-institutions","tag-jackson","tag-jesse","tag-lashed","tag-late","tag-memorial","tag-news","tag-obama","tag-paid","tag-path","tag-president","tag-rights","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-tribute","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}