Thousands including Obama pay tribute to Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.

Three former Democratic presidents are set to speak at a Chicago church as mourners pay a final public tribute to the late Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.

Former Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden received cheers and applause Friday as they joined thousands of people for a celebration of life for the civil rights leader. But it was “the South Side’s own, President Barack Obama,” as an announcer described him, who received the loudest round of applause as he entered the chamber.

Obama, Clinton and Biden followed the arrival of Jackson’s family into the church sanctuary.

The event honors the protege of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and two-time presidential candidate and follows memorial services that drew large crowds in Chicago and South Carolina, where Jackson was born. Friday’s celebration — at an influential Black church with a 10,000-seat arena — is expected to be the largest.

Crowds of attendees waited in long lines outside the church on the city’s South Side as television screens played excerpts of some of Jackson’s most famous speeches. Inside, vendors sold pins with his 1984 presidential slogan and hoodies with his “I Am Somebody” mantra.