CHICAGO \u2014 Former Presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton joined thousands of mourners at a public memorial service \u200bfor Jesse Jackson in Chicago to honor the longtime civil-rights activist and Democratic political leader.<\/p>\n
Jackson, who died last month at the age of 84, was a leading advocate for voting rights and desegregation.<\/p>\n
The \u200cmemorial on Friday at the House of Hope, a 10,000-seat venue on Chicago’s South Side, was celebratory, with a choir performing rousing gospel songs while \u2060attendees stood, clapped and sang along.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump \u200bdid not attend due to his schedule and ongoing \u2060events, a White House official said.<\/p>\n
“Rev. Jackson will be remembered for his oratory prowess, but in Chicago we knew him \u200cas a brilliant strategist, master \u200cnegotiator and organizing savant,” said Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who was slated to speak at the \u2060service.<\/p>\n
In addition to the former presidents, former first ladies Jill Biden \u2060and Hillary Clinton, who also served as U.S. secretary of state, were present, along with the Rev. Al Sharpton, a prominent civil rights activist; Pete Buttigieg, former U.S. secretary of transportation; and Omarosa Manigault Newman, a reality TV star and former White House aide. Singers Jennifer Hudson, BeBe Winans and Pastor Marvin Winans were set to perform.<\/p>\n
The service began with attendees chanting “I am somebody!” and “Keep hope alive!”, some of Jackson’s most well-known \u200cphrases.<\/p>\n
Events \u200bin Chicago, South Carolina<\/p>\n
Memorial events for Jackson began in Chicago last week, drawing elected officials, advocates and community members. Jackson’s body also \u200clay in state \u200cin South Carolina, where \u2060he was born.<\/p>\n
An inspirational speaker and longtime Chicagoan, Jackson helped lead the nation’s civil rights movement after the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Jackson spent more than half a century working to dismantle segregationist systems and broaden political participation for Black Americans and other marginalized communities.<\/p>\n
His two presidential campaigns mobilized millions of new voters under the \u200cbanner of the “Rainbow Coalition,” pushing the \u200bDemocratic Party to address issues affecting working-class Americans, farmers and communities \u200cof color.<\/p>\n
\n The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO \u2014 Former Presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton joined thousands of mourners at a public…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":508437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,1302,3811,473,3812,134,3729,3,111,3813,2229,3814,99,1505,2987,21,19,22,20,25,24,3324,2986],"class_list":{"0":"post-508436","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-cars","10":"tag-classifieds","11":"tag-history","12":"tag-homes","13":"tag-jobs","14":"tag-local","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-politics","17":"tag-radio","18":"tag-religion","19":"tag-salt-lake","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-television","22":"tag-traffic","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-united-states-of-america","25":"tag-unitedstates","26":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","27":"tag-us","28":"tag-usa","29":"tag-utah","30":"tag-weather"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}