The casket with the Rev. Jesse Jackson was seen before the Public Homegoing Service at the House of Hope in Chicago on Friday, March 6, 2026. Erin Hooley/AP
The rare qualities that distinguished the Rev. Jesse Jackson — his fortitude as a civil rights leader and the love he shared as a mentor, friend and father — were praised repeatedly on Friday as his family and a roster of luminaries, including three former U.S. presidents, gathered for Jackson’s funeral on Chicago’s South Side.
Time and again, it came back to the three words Jackson made famous. “I am! Somebody!” the crowd chanted inside the House of Hope megachurch, echoing Jackson’s belief that every person matters regardless of race or economic standing.
Former President Barack Obama said Jackson “paved the road,” bringing social change and proving in the 1980s that a Black presidential candidate could be taken seriously. “His voice called on each of us to be heralds of change, to be messengers of hope, to step forward and say, ‘Send me,'” Obama said, urging people to act where they can — in schools, workplaces, neighborhoods and cities.
Jackson’s son, Yusef, offered vivid detail of his father’s commitment to helping those in need. Quoting his father, he said, “I intend to die with my shoes on,” describing Jackson’s refusal to let health problems stop him from working for people in war-torn Ukraine and Americans facing food insecurity. Yusef also recalled the family side of Jackson, his love for his children and grandchildren, and closed with another of Jackson’s mottos: “Keep hope alive.”
Speakers underscored Jackson’s message of hope while also referencing the current political moment. Obama acknowledged how difficult it is to remain hopeful “when every day you wake up to things you just didn’t think were possible,” and when people are told to fear and turn on one another and told some Americans count more than others.
Former presidential candidate Kamala Harris said she had predicted how President Trump’s second term would unfold. “I’m not into saying ‘I told you so,’ but we did see it coming,” she said. “But what I did not predict is that we would not have Jesse Jackson with us to get through this.”
Several speakers described how Jackson planted seeds that shaped their careers. Judge Greg Mathis said hearing Jackson say “I am somebody” 50 years ago changed his life. Mathis met Jackson as a teenager incarcerated in Detroit; Jackson encouraged him to go to college, later brought him onto his 1988 presidential campaign, and eventually had Mathis serve as vice president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. When Mathis got a television offer, Jackson urged him to take it to spread a message of hope to millions.
Obama recalled watching Jackson’s first presidential debate as a college student. “When that debate was over, I turned off that TV, and I thought the same thing that I know a lot of people thought… Jesse hadn’t just held his own. He had owned that stage,” Obama said, adding that Jackson’s example told a young outsider that there was nowhere they didn’t belong.
One of the most emotional tributes came from NBA Hall of Famer Isiah Thomas, a longtime friend who remembered meeting Jackson as a child living in poverty and relying on a soup line. Thomas recalled Jackson bending down, looking him in the eye and telling him, “You are somebody,” offering a countermessage to a society that had told him otherwise.