Jesse Jackson Laid to Rest, Women's March & More Chicago Photos

Chicago wrote itself into history books and onto front pages over the past two weeks, as the city grieved a civil rights giant, marched for women’s rights, and kept living the complicated, beautiful, weather-whipped life it always has.

The centerpiece of it all was the farewell to the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., whose passing drew three former presidents to Chicago’s South Side and reminded the country just how large a shadow this city has cast over American history.

On March 6, House of Hope filled with mourners and dignitaries for Jackson’s Celebration of Life. Father Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina Church delivered remarks to a room that included former President Barack Obama, former President Joe Biden, former President Bill Clinton, former Vice President Kamala Harris, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and former first lady Jill Biden. Gospel artist Le’Andria Johnson sang “We Shall Overcome,” the anthem Jackson had carried with him across five decades of struggle, from Selma to the streets of Chicago.

The next morning, March 7, the family gathered for a private homegoing service at Rainbow PUSH Coalition headquarters in Kenwood. It was quieter, more intimate, and in some ways more piercing. Photos from the service captured Jesse Jackson Jr. speaking while his wife Jacqueline kissed his cheek. Another image showed Yusef Jackson being consoled as his father’s casket was loaded into a hearse. These were not images of a political figure. They were images of sons losing their dad.

Jackson’s family called him someone who opened doors. That framing matters in a city that has spent generations arguing over who gets access and who gets left out. His absence will be felt in those arguments for years to come.

Two days later, Chicago shifted gears without missing a step.

Hundreds of protesters marched north on Dearborn Street on March 8 for International Women’s Day, eventually making their way toward Trump Tower. The march drew counter-protesters, and at least one attempt to disrupt the event near the tower ended with a man being shoved off the bed of an organizer’s pickup truck by volunteers. The scene captured something real about this political moment. Public space is contested. People are angry. And Chicago’s streets have always been where that anger finds its feet.

March also brought a housing story that connects directly to one of the city’s most watched developments. Reyna Collins, a resident at the Chaney Braggs Apartments at 6450 S. Stony Island Ave., spoke at a press conference about displacement fears. Her building sits near the Obama Presidential Center site in Woodlawn, and her neighbors say years of landlord neglect have pushed them toward the edge. The tension between big civic projects and the people already living in those neighborhoods is not new to Chicago. It just keeps arriving with new addresses.

Not everything the cameras caught this week was heavy.

On March 9, rapper Adamn Killa cruised on a bicycle near Montrose Pier on an unseasonably warm afternoon, the kind of day that arrives in early spring like a rumor you want to believe. Three days earlier, low-hanging fog wrapped itself around downtown and the Chicago River like something out of a Carl Sandburg poem, the city half-hidden and moody beneath warm rain.

A florist shop on Chicago Avenue in West Town gave photographers another kind of image: Olha Sahaidak and her husband Yaroslav, standing together in front of their shop, Bloom and Buff Flowers. Small businesses, immigrant stories, neighborhood anchors. Chicago runs on all of it.

This stretch of days captured what this city does better than most. It buries its legends with dignity. It marches when it has to. It worries about its most vulnerable residents. And then, when the temperature climbs unexpectedly in March, somebody gets on a bicycle and rides toward the lake.

That combination of grief and resilience, of grand history and ordinary life, is what makes Chicago worth covering. It is also what makes it hard to look away.