The Rotunda is a room; Jackson was a movement

The Rotunda is a room; Jackson was a movement

America has rituals for the dead. We lower flags. We dim lights. We ask for moments of silence. In rare cases — former presidents, Rosa Parks — we place bodies beneath the Capitol dome and call it honor. So when congressional leaders declined to extend that honor to the Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson, they cited precedent. Precedent is tidy. Procedural. It is also how exclusion dresses itself in neutrality. But here is the truth: the Capitol Rotunda i…