New York, (EFE).- Former United States presidents Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Bill Clinton, along with former vice president and the most recent Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, paid their respects on Friday to the iconic American activist Jesse Jackson at a public wake in Chicago, highlighting that he inspired people to be agents of change.
Obama, the first of the three former US presidents to bid farewell to the historic civil rights leader, said that Jackson impacted «so many lives» and left behind a legacy of hope. He added that «his voice calls on each of us to be heralds of change.»
Obama, Clinton, and Biden paid tribute to Jackson at a crowded public wake held in Chicago, the city where Jackson cemented his status as a civil rights leader during the 20th century and where he passed away on Feb. 17.
Jesse Louis Jackson (1941-2026), a two-time presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, died at age 84 after being hospitalized in Nov. to receive treatment for a rare and particularly severe neurodegenerative disease, Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP).
In a speech lasting around half an hour, Obama (2009-2017), the first of the three former presidents to speak, described Jesse Jackson as someone who «instinctively understood that individual success meant nothing unless everybody was free.»
Obama emphasized the inspiration Jackson provided for the current generation: «If we don’t step up, no one else will.» Although he did not mention the current US president, Donald Trump, he urged Americans not to lower their heads “and wait for the storm to pass.»
«Each day, we wake up to some new assault on our democratic institutions,» Obama said in his critique of the current administration.
For his part, Joe Biden (2021-2025) remembered Jesse Jackson as a determined and tenacious man, seeking “to redeem in the soul of America.” He pointed out that he admired the passion and “courage of his convictions,” and how “he believed in his bones in the promise of America.”
Meanwhile, Bill Clinton (1993-2001) declared that his presence at Jesse Jackson’s wake was «more as a friend than as a former president» and added that the activist «knew that change came from the outside in and sometimes from the inside out. So he knew how to keep pushing», affirming that this made Clinton a better president.
In her address, the last Democratic candidate for the 2024 elections, Kamala Harris, defined Jackson as a man who “saw not only the interconnection, but the interdependence of the various struggles for justice and dignity on behalf of Black Americans, Native and Asian Americans, Latino, LGBTQ Americans, and Americans with disabilities.”
The private funeral for the American activist, born in South Carolina, is set to take place on Saturday. Jackson revealed in 2017 that he suffered from Parkinson’s disease. He was treated as an outpatient at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago for at least two years before sharing the diagnosis publicly.
In Nov., he was admitted for treatment for his illness, according to his organization, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
The iconic figure of the civil rights movement in the United States officially stepped down in 2023 from the organization he had founded in 1971, three years after the assassination of his fellow activist Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, which Jackson witnessed.
The group’s mission is to protect, defend, and win civil rights, and it defines itself as a multiracial, multi-issue, progressive, and international organization that seeks social change. EFE
ecs-jta/dmv
