Longtime New Orleans activist Jerome “Big Duck” Smith was laid to rest Saturday after an hours-long memorial service attended by hundreds and featuring rousing musical performances and speeches by top elected officials and fellow veterans of the Civil Rights Movement.
Smith, 87, who died last month after a battle with cancer, participated in sit-ins, picket lines and Freedom Rides during the fight for Black civil rights. As a member of the Congress of Racial Equality, he had “probably spent more months in jail and been beaten more often than any other CORE member,” historians Elliott Rudwick and August Meier wrote in their 1973 history of the activist group.
“He was a model to us,” said Malik Rahim, a former New Orleans Black Panther party leader and activist…