CHICAGO – They sent the Rev. Jesse Jackson home Saturday the only way it could have been done: with Gospel music, testimony that often brought people to their feet and story after story about a man who rose from humble beginnings to become one of America’s most influential Civil Rights leaders.
The final service in Jackson’s honor, in a packed chapel at the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, proved befitting of a human rights advocate who came to be known, simply, as the “country preacher.” Jackson earned that nickname in the years after leaving the Chicago Theological Seminary, while he marched from Selma to Montgomery and through streets in Chicago and far beyond.
Like any good country preacher, Jackson could move people to tears and move them to act. Speakers and performers at his funeral Saturday – a group that included his children, singer Stevie Wonder and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa – came to do both…