COLUMBIA, S.C. — The Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. never stopped fighting for civil rights around the world. This includes South Carolina, the state where he was born and raised, and where he first experienced state-sanctioned racial discrimination.
Jackson’s body lay in state Monday inside the South Carolina Capitol. It started with a rousing version of the Black national anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” that reverberated through the Statehouse — a building that was partially destroyed in 1865 during the Civil War, which South Carolina started to keep slavery.
Before the doors opened to the public, politicians and other guests remembered a man who grew up in segregated Greenville and, in 1960, led seven Black high school students into the whites-only library branch. They sat down, quietly read books and magazines, and were arrested. And Jackson’s civil rights career began.
Jackson has close ties to the Carolinas. He was born and raised in Greenville, South Carolina, and graduated from North Carolina A&T State University in 1964.
He died Feb. 17 at the age of 84 after battling a rare neurological disorder that affected his mobility and ability to speak in his later years.
His casket, draped in an American flag, arrived at the South Carolina Statehouse on a horse-drawn caisson on a chilly, cloudy morning. A special, white-gloved Highway Patrol honor guard escorted Jackson inside the Statehouse and to the second floor, where well over 100 people packed under the rotunda for a ceremony before the public was invited in to pay their respects. Behind Jackson’s casket, with his back turned, was a statue of former U.S. Vice President John C. Calhoun, a zealous defender of slavery.
When the Statehouse doors opened to the public, a line seven blocks long was waiting. People walked up to the second floor and were given a moment to pray or take a picture or a selfie before a trooper in a dress uniform politely asked them to keep moving.
The South Carolina services are part of two weeks of events. It began with Jackson’s body lying in repose last week at his Rainbow PUSH Coalition’s Chicago headquarters.
After South Carolina, Jackson will be returned to Chicago for a large celebration of life gathering at a megachurch and the final homegoing services at the Rainbow PUSH headquarters. Plans for a service in Washington, D.C., to honor him have been postponed until a later date.
‘Keep hope alive’
Channel 9’s Ken Lemon was in Columbia and spoke with people inspired by Jackson.
“We are going to keep hope alive,” said Robin Odoms, an attendee.
People repeated Jackson’s memorable phrases including, “I am somebody.”
“No matter what is going on, ‘I am somebody’ and I will be somebody in this world,” said Bella Frazier, 17, an attendee.
Dorris Wright, of Salisbury, remembered Jackson’s voice in her ear as a child.
“He was always thinking,” she said.
Together they fought to integrate libraries in Greenville before Jackson joined the civil rights movement with Dr. Martin Luther King.
Wright confronted leaders of the library with Jackson beside her.
“He was egging me on telling me, ‘You know what you are supposed to say. You know what you are supposed to say,’” Wright said.
Kwame McLean snapped a picture of the man who made him proud as an elementary school child.
McLean’s mother took him to the polls when Jackson ran for president.
“I remember my mother pulling the lever and for that symbolizes that, we as Black people, could reach the highest office in this country,” McLean said.
People told Lemon that Jackson will be missed, but he left them with the words to gather the strength to keep hope alive.
“We’ve got people here who can keep it going,” said Joann Loveless, an attendee.
Jackson fought for the poor
Nationally and internationally, Jackson advocated for the poor and underrepresented for voting rights, job opportunities, education and health care. He scored diplomatic victories with world leaders.
Through his Rainbow PUSH Coalition, he channeled cries for Black pride and self-determination into corporate boardrooms, pressuring executives to make America a more open and equitable society. He was the Civil Rights Movement’s torchbearer after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination and would run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988.
Jackson was present in 2015 when the South Carolina House voted to finally remove the Confederate flag from the Capitol grounds. Several were placed there during the 1960s in opposition to the federal government’s push for integration.
South Carolina’s longest-serving legislator found Jackson in the celebration. Democratic Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter said he pulled her aside.
Mayor says Jackson ‘freed us all’
“It’s great to take down the Confederate flag. But what about the Confederate agenda,” Cobb-Hunter recalled him saying. “What I want people to remember is there is still much work to do.”
Jackson also pushed in 2003 for Greenville County to honor King by matching the federal holiday in his honor.
It’s not just Black South Carolinians who owe Jackson a debt of gratitude. Anyone who enjoys the rewards of a rapidly growing state, thanks in part to manufacturers like luxury carmaker BMW and airplane maker Boeing locating here, owes him, Greenville Mayor Knox White said.
“Can you imagine a BMW or a Boeing would locate in a segregated South Carolina? Of course not,” White said. “He freed us all.”
Jackson is just the second Black man to lie in state at the South Carolina Capitol. State Sen. Clementa Pinckney was honored in 2015 after he was shot and killed in the Charleston church shooting that led to the removal of the Confederate flag from Statehouse grounds.
VIDEO: Former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt reflects on Rev. Jesse Jackson’s lasting legacy
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