Civil rights leader and Greenville native Jesse Jackson returned to South Carolina for the final time on Monday as the public wrapped itself around the Statehouse to say a last goodbye.
Hundreds snaked around the state Capitol as family, friends and state lawmakers gathered inside for a private ceremony to pay their final respects.
"This is a friendship that spanned generations," Congressman Jim Clyburn said, calling the friendship an "emotional connection."
Clyburn, of Sumter, and Jackson attended rival high schools.
Jackson, Clyburn said, was the star quarterback at his.
Clyburn was a "prolific benchwarmer."
Both attended historically Black universities — Jackson at North Carolina A&T State University and Clyburn at S.C. State University — and joined the same fraternity, Omega Psi Phi.
"In that brotherhood, ... we developed a love and respect that lasted" for years, Clyburn said.
Jackson was "not a summer soldier," Clyburn, a former U.S. House majority whip, added. "He was not a sunshine patriot. He stood the times, and, because of his efforts, I am able to sit where I sit today."
Jackson died Feb. 17 after battling a rare neurological disorder.
He was 84.
Later Monday, a public memorial will be held for Jackson at Brookland Baptist Church. Jackson will return to Chicago for a large celebration gathering at a megachurch and a final service at the headquarters of Jackson's Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
At the South Carolina Statehouse Monday, longtime friends, admirers and allies of Jackson's spoke. Roughly 100 people attended the ceremony.
They included Andrew Young, a civil rights leader, former Georgia congressman, Atlanta mayor and ambassador to the United Nations.
They also included state Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, state Sen. Karl Allen, University South Carolina women's basketball coach Dawn Staley and Greenville Mayor Knox White, who said Jackson was the embodiment of "loud and proud," but who could also be thoughtful.
He was "the model of servant leadership," White said.
Though Jackson spent most of his adult life outside of South Carolina, he continued to be active in his home state.
He'd often come back to South Carolina to speak to groups and advocate for particular causes, such as in 2015 when he joined legislators to call for the Confederate flag to come off the Statehouse grounds after the murders of nine Black parishioners in Charleston.
Jackson is the second Black man to lie in state at the Statehouse.
State Sen. Clementa Pinckney, who was killed in the Charleston church shooting in 2015, was honored at the Capitol.
"Thank you for the honor of bringing your dad back to South Carolina. Thank you for sharing him with so many for so long," state Rep. Chandra Dillard, D-Greenville, said Monday to Jackson's family. "Sometimes you just want a husband, you just want a dad. But your dad was special, and he had a calling on his life. And when you have a calling, you have to be obedient, and he was."
Among those outside the Statehouse waiting to say a final goodbye was 19-year-old Kaneshia Jeter, a choir singer at nearby Allen University.
"I know there's a lot that he's really done, not even just for communities in general, but especially in the Black community," Jones said. "And it's really just an honor being here."
SC Public Radio reporter Luis-Alfredo Garcia and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
