Homegoing service will celebrate civil rights leader Jesse Jackson in Chicago

The Rev. Jesse Jackson’s loved ones will celebrate his life in Chicago on Friday, as his family hosts a memorial homegoing service that’s open to the public, but will also be attended by dignitaries and celebrities.

Former presidents Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Bill Clinton are expected to attend the service at the House of Hope, a megachurch on Chicago’s South Side. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker are scheduled to speak on Friday.

The service will also feature performances by Chicago native Jennifer Hudson, along with gospel singers Bebe Winans and Pastor Marvin Winans.

The event is slated to begin at noon ET and is expected to run for several hours. You can watch streaming video of the service here, along with live coverage from WBEZ in Chicago.

The service — and another, private service on Saturday — will be officiated by faith leaders Dr. Charles Jenkins and Rev. James T. Meeks.

Jackson died on Feb. 17 at age 84. His death has brought an outpouring of tributes to the civil rights leader and politician who devoted his life to pushing for equality and change. His early efforts to fight segregation included insisting on access to the “white library” in his hometown of Greenville, S.C., in 1960.

Dorris Wright, a former classmate of Jackson’s who was one of the “Greenville Eight” along with him, told Here & Now that after their action, “the library was shut down, I think, for about a week or ten days. And then when they reopened, they reopened it to everybody.”

Five years later, Jackson marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and others in Selma, Ala. His advocacy continued in the decades that followed, leading Jackson to run for president in 1984 and 1988.

The Chicago ceremonies bookend a week that began with Jackson’s body lying in state at the South Carolina Capitol on Monday. There, he was honored in events that drew luminaries such as Rep. Jim Clyburn, former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young, and University of South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley.

Last week, Jackson’s body lay in repose at the headquarters of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the Chicago-based civil rights organization he founded. His body will return to the group’s headquarters on Saturday, for a celebration that will be private, but streamed online.

Jackson will be laid to rest in Chicago’s venerable Oak Woods Cemetery. There, as WBEZ reports, Jackson will join civil rights icons such as journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who died in 1931, and Olympian Jesse Owens, who died in 1980.