McCain, one of the four students whose 1960 sit-in at a Greensboro lunch counter started a movement, died last week at 73.
"Frank McCain was such a dear friend, a classmate and such a force for change in the America we now live in," Jackson told me today. "God assigned Frank and the other three to history. In so many ways Frank was a cut above the rest of us. He was smarter, more mature, more focused. He was a trailblazer."
Jackson will speak at McCain's 2 p.m. service at Charlotte's Friendship Missionary Baptist Church.
On Thursday morning, McCain will be remembered at a memorial service on the A&T campus.