Jesse Jackson Returns to South Carolina to Lie in State as Civil Rights Icon Receives Final Honors
The Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. is returning to his home state of South Carolina one final time, lying in state at the state capitol on Monday in a ceremony that honors a lifetime of fighting for civil rights. The final full honors from the state where he was born mark a profound journey — from a childhood in segregated Greenville, where in 1960 the young Jackson couldn't enter the whites-only branch of the local library, to lying in state in the very building that once symbolized the system he spent his life dismantling. Jackson, who marched with Martin Luther King Jr., ran for president twice, and spent decades as one of the most prominent voices in the African American church, leaves a legacy that spans the civil rights movement, presidential politics, and the intersection of faith and activism that has defined Black Christianity in America.
Read Full Story at The GuardianHe has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
— Micah 6:8
Jesse Jackson's life — whatever one's political assessment of it — was animated by the conviction that faith demands action in the public square. The prophet Micah's call to justice, mercy, and humility before God captures the theological core of the civil rights tradition in which Jackson lived and labored. As he receives his final earthly honors, the question Micah poses remains for all who follow: what does the Lord require of you?