COLUMBIA — Mourners circled the Statehouse on Monday to honor the Rev. Jesse Jackson and say “thank you” to a civil rights icon whose activism for equality began in the Palmetto State.
Jackson died Feb. 17 at his home in Chicago at age 84. Though never an elected official himself, he inspired generations of Americans through his historic 1984 and 1988 campaigns for president. But it was at a segregated library in Greenville in 1960, while as a college student home from summer break, that launched his leadership in the Civil Rights Movement.
The tribute in his home state began with a mile-long procession of his casket on a horse-drawn wagon from Leevy’s Funeral Home to the Statehouse. On top of the dome the flags flew at half-mast in his honor from sunrise to sunset. His closed casket, draped with an American flag, was brought into the Statehouse shortly before 10 a.m.
By then, people had already been standing in line for nearly two hours.
They included Camden residents Stanley Gorham, 79, and Stanley, 78, who attended the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. made his “I Have a Dream” speech. Jackson, also in the crowd, later marched alongside King and witnessed his 1968 assassination in Memphis.
Gorham’s daughter, Theresa Allen, said the voices of King and Jackson gave her hope and a belief in equality.
She came to the Statehouse to give him one last “ginormous thank you for his service,” Allen, also of Camden, told the SC Daily Gazette. “Being here today is also saying to him, although you earned your wings, we’re still here to be that voice for you.”
Gentarra Williams, 30, of Columbia, watched the procession with her mother and 1-year-old nephew Jordan.
“We get to witness history,” Williams said. “I want my nephew to see a history book and see this picture and say, ‘Everybody, I was there. I saw it.’”
As they stood in line, several dozen people gathered inside the Statehouse for an invitation-only event to “hold hands, sing songs and pray quiet prayers,” as Jackson’s eldest daughter, Santita Jackson, said.
Those songs included “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” also known as the Black national anthem, a hymn first performed in 1900.
“We thank God for this king, this son of South Carolina, this great man who will live forever and ever and ever, as long as you call his name and as long as you don’t just remember him but resemble him,” Santita Jackson said. “Do the work.”
The friends, family and significant South Carolinians attending the ceremony came to celebrate “a life well-lived and a job well-done,” said Rep. Jermaine Johnson, a Hopkins Democrat who’s running for governor.
Johnson, who emceed the ceremony, and other Black politicians who spoke credited Jackson with helping pave the way for their successes.
Among them were U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, former U.S. Rep. Andrew Young of Georgia, a close confidante of King during the Civil Rights Movement, and University of South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley. Greg Mathis, of TV fame for the show “Judge Mathis,” credited Jackson with telling him to take his TV opportunity.
Legislators past and present included former Rep. James Felder. In 1970, he, I.S. Leevy Johnson and the late Herbert Fielding made history as the first Black South Carolinians elected to the House since 1902.
The Greenville native’s stop in Columbia is part of a nationwide opportunity for people to say goodbye to the 84-year-old who worked with Martin Luther King Jr. before beginning his own political movement, which helped launch the modern Democratic Party.
Celebrations of his life are also scheduled in Chicago and Washington, D.C.
The ceremonies in Jackson’s home state carry special significance, as Jackson is one of only a dozen or so people to lie in honor in the Statehouse and likely the first who was not an elected official.
Santita Jackson thanked Gov. Henry McMaster for “extending the high and unusual honor” of allowing her father’s body to rest in the Statehouse. The Republican governor approved the family’s request after the office of U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson denied a similar request that Jackson lie in state beneath the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.
McMaster did not attend the morning ceremony but later stopped by the casket to pay his respects.
The ceremony
Clyburn first met Jackson as a rival in high school football and basketball.
Jackson was his school’s starting quarterback, while Clyburn was “a prolific benchwarmer,” he said.
But Clyburn befriended Jackson’s mother, who supported Clyburn’s political career from the get-go. At her urging, Clyburn and Jackson became friends, and eventually their families grew so close that their children became friends, too.
“This is a friendship that spans generations,” Clyburn said.
State Rep. Chandra Dillard, a Greenville Democrat, and Greenville Mayor Knox White talked about Jackson’s work in his hometown.
That included organizing a July 1960 sit-in at the then-segregated Greenville County Public Library. The arrest of the Greenville Eight, as the group of students became known, prompted the library’s integration several months later.
Nearly half a century later, in 2005, Jackson led a march in his hometown to honor Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, as a way to highlight Greenville County’s status as the nation’s last to recognize MLK Day as a holiday for public workers. Also threatened with an economic boycott, the County Council voted the next month to make MLK Day a holiday in January 2006.
“He identified with the leftover, the lowdown and the mistreated,” Dillard said. “And he gave them a home by telling them that they were somebody.”
Because of him, “little boys like myself are able to say, ‘I am somebody,’” said Sen. Karl Allen, an Orangeburg Democrat and friend of Jackson’s.
Allen and politicians who followed his speech repeated Jackson’s mantra, declaring with the crowd: “I am somebody.”
“‘I came from nowhere, no name, I understand,’” Allen recalled Jackson saying. “‘No insurance, I understand. Hot, cold water, I didn’t have, I understand.’
“But I am somebody,” Allen said.
Along with his work promoting civil rights, Jackson was an accomplished and memorable preacher, speakers said.
On a trip to the Statehouse, senators asked Jackson to lead them in prayer, but no one wanted to tell him he needed to keep his remarks short, Allen said. Given the job, Allen suggested to Jackson that he’d have limited time.
“‘I’ve been praying my whole blank, blank, blank, blank life,’” Allen said Jackson responded, censoring his colorful language. “‘Tell them that I know how to pray.’”
Many of the speakers urged those in attendance to continue the work Jackson started. Although he championed a lot of progress, the country has yet to fully realize the world of equality he wanted to see, said Laura Hall, past president of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators.
“Today, we simply do not mourn a man,” Hall said. “We recommit to the movement.”
Skylar Laird covers the South Carolina Legislature and criminal justice issues. Originally from Missouri, she previously worked for The Post and Courier’s Columbia bureau.
Jessica Holdman writes about the economy, workforce and higher education. Before joining the SC Daily Gazette, she was a business reporter for The Post and Courier.
SC Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
