Rev. Jesse Jackson took on Hollywood 20 years before #OscarsSoWhite

Nearly 20 years before Black Twitter’s #OscarsSoWhite campaign generated a firestorm over the lack of Black nominees at the Academy Awards, Rev. Jesse Jackson lit a spark with a call to protest the 1996 ceremony.

That year, just one Black person, short film director Dianne Houston, was included among 166 nominees.

“We are going to open up the consciousness of Hollywood,” said Jackson, who died at 84 on Tuesday. The Chicago civil rights leader called for attendees to wear a symbol against “race exclusion and cultural violence” in Hollywood, and others to picket outside of ABC-TV affiliates in Chicago and other cities.

Ultimately, the protest faltered, and Jackson was criticized by the academy, viewers and other industry insiders, including Black actors who attended the event. But the civil rights leader’s critiques proved prescient amid the public outcry over the 2015 and 2016 ceremonies, which did not recognize any actors of color in the acting categories.

By contrast, at this year’s forthcoming Academy Awards, multiple actors of color are up for trophies, with Black director Ryan Coogler's film "Sinners" garnering 16 nominations, making it the most-Oscar-nominated movie in history.

Reflecting on the progress since Jackson’s early advocacy, industry veterans and young filmmakers alike are celebrating Jackson for not only raising awareness about inequities in Hollywood, but also the actions he took to create opportunities for Black filmmakers and entertainers.

“He was always focusing on these questions of equity and leadership, and that's what he was bringing to the Oscars campaign,” said Jacqueline Stewart, a cinema and media studies professor at the University of Chicago and former director and president of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles.

“He was bringing visibility to the issue even though people had mixed responses. But, without a doubt, it created the kind of cultural conversation that eventually did lead the academy to make some important changes.”

Prior to his Academy Awards protest, Jackson formed the Rainbow Coalition on Fairness in the Media, demanding that studio and network executives hire more people of color and support diverse films and TV shows. But the movement failed to gain momentum. Later, he struggled to generate support at the 1996 Oscars in part because the ceremony featured two prominent Black participants that people wanted to support: producer Quincy Jones and host Whoopi Goldberg, who poked fun at Jackson from the stage.

Still, Jackson should be credited with sounding the alarm about marginalization in the industry, said Michael NJ Wright, a filmmaker and adjunct professor of instruction at Columbia College Chicago.

“There was this attitude that Black people made Black movies, women made women's movies, and white men made everything,” Wright said. “It was just an understanding of the way the movie business functioned.”

But others picked up where Jackson left off two years later, when the academy failed to nominate any people of color for acting awards. As one of few artists of color recognized in other categories, Spike Lee spoke out about the oversight.

“Until the academy actually starts to recruit younger members and there is more diversity in it, I don't see a change happening,” Lee said at the time. The director was nominated for his documentary “4 Little Girls.”

“I just think that as a whole, with African American artists in front and behind the camera, the academy has been slow to recognize their work," he said.

Former Sun-Times film critic Richard Roeper also wrote a column criticizing the awards for overlooking Black artists, citing performances in "Amistad," "Soul Food" and "Eve’s Bayou" as worthy of recognition.

“Scanning the list, I'm wondering if Jackson's publicity blitz didn't come a couple of years too soon,” he wrote. “This year more than ever, he could have made the argument that the academy has neglected African Americans who should have been honored.”

The conversation was revived decades later, when attorney-turned-media strategist April Reign spearheaded the #OscarSoWhite social media movement. In 2016, prominent Hollywood players Spike Lee, Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith boycotted the ceremony. And the same year, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, the first Black female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, made a commitment to increase the number of women and people of color in the groups voting membership.

Jackson praised the changes in a 2016 opinion piece in USA Today, but called for more diversity in leadership positions at studios.

“The lack of diversity starts long before the stars pose and parade on the red carpet come Oscar night,” he wrote. “Open your eyes, Hollywood. It’s time to flip the script.”

Jackson's efforts have inspired up-and-coming filmmakers such as jada-amina, who is also the curator of the Black Harvest Film Festival in Chicago.

“He was challenging how wealth and opportunity really circulate in the industry,” she said.

The greatest lesson she learned from Jackson was self-reliance, she said.

“The response to the blighting in Hollywood of Black stories is to create our own movement," she said.

Jackson himself showcased the value of independence, creating opportunities for Black filmmakers and entertainers during the 1972 Black Expo in Chicago. Hosted at the International Amphitheater by his Operation PUSH organization, the five-day business, arts and culture event drew more than a million attendees.

From the Temptations and the Jackson Five to Nancy Wilson and the Staple Singers, Jackson helped recruit a wealth of Black talent to perform. The event was documented by director Stan Lathan in a film, "Save the Children." A digitally restored version is streaming on Netflix.

"They had Black cameramen at a time when it was very difficult for Black people to get into the unions," Stewart said. "[Jackson] was so committed to Black agency and autonomy and self-determination, and he brought that into every interaction that he had with film and film-making."

That influence has carried on in Black filmmakers like Chicago native Robert Townsend, who famously directed, produced and financed his debut film, "Hollywood Shuffle."

“My heart hurts today with the passing of the civil rights legend Rev. Jesse Jackson," Townsend told the Sun-Times in a statement. "As the pendulum swings backwards in these trying times, he is a constant reminder of the movement he helped start and put his life on the line for. May God bless his soul. I pray for his family at this time and lift them up.”

Jackson's life is also a reminder that justice is not always immediate, Wright said.

"He chipped away at many of these institutions that were impediments, and then we get progress," he said. "Maybe not the generation that we lived, but future generations enjoy it."