Remembering Jesse Jackson’s Poetic Synthesis
Reverend Jesse Jackson surprised me during a trip to his home state of South Carolina. He asked that I join him in the hospital room of his dying mother, Helen Burns Jackson. I had accompanied him in 2015 to write about his pushing then-governor Nikki Haley to accept Medicaid expansion funds from Barack Obama’s administration and to remove the Confederate flag from government property. When his mother became ill, he made more frequent trips to Greenville, always tying them to a political purpose. As I was about to learn, Jackson performed a poetic synthesis throughout his 84 years, fusing democracy as political theory, ethical practice, and everyday lifestyle.
“Baby!” Mrs. Jackson said excitedly upon seeing her beloved son. “Baby’s here, momma,” the civil rights leader answered back. He introduced me as a “journalist writing about what I’m trying to do here,” but also as a “friend.” Upon hearing that word, Jackson’s mother reached for my hand and said, “Thank you for being a friend to my son.” I took her hand.
Then, I stepped into the hallway, allowing a mother and child their privacy. When Jackson joined me, he propped himself onto a cast-iron radiator, his back leaning against a window under a rapid fire of hard rain.
“My mother was a hair stylist by trade,” he said, “But a social worker by faith.” With the storm providing a steady drumbeat for the rhythm in his voice, he recalled his mother teaching illiterate men to read, helping them fill out employment or government aid forms. He remembered her styling hair for women heading to a job interview or big date, even if they couldn’t afford to pay her.
“If I have ever shown a desire to help those who most need it, if I’ve been successful in that mission, it is because of my mother,” he said before we set off to a meeting with city council members about how to harness their power to make their state more equitable.
In his own journey through the civil rights movement, he challenged a country that failed to adhere to its foundational values. Jackson combined moral simplicity with political profundity.
The cynics and charlatans of America’s sclerotic political system and culture often missed both elements, accusing him of untoward ambition and rhetorical divisiveness. It is the common script against dissidents. Jackson observed the tactic while working as an aide to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whom critics also accused of self-promotion. In fact, critiques of King and Jackson were so similar that when I appeared on WGN in Chicago to discuss my 2020 book on Jackson, the anchor read absurd 1960s quotes I had included about King’s alleged “egotism,” mistaking them for ridicule of Jackson.
Born in 1941, growing up Black and poor in the Jim Crow South, Jesse Louis Jackson attended segregated schools, heard rumors of local lynchings, and, as a college student in 1960, collided headfirst with then-typical southern American experience for anyone whose skin was a shade darker than pale.
When checking out a book from a segregated public library, a police officer hurled racial slurs and threw him to the curb. Jackson told me about it decades later—after he had spoken to adoring audiences worldwide, after he had received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, after he had acquired power and influence. And yet, tears filled his eyes. His emotion was proof that the wounds of degradation never fully heal. It was those wounds that he aimed to heal for constituents.
Jackson and seven other college students, who the press would christen the “Greenville Eight,” launched the campaign to desegregate the Greenville library system. It was the first of many movements he would help to lead.
During one conversation, he told me he was “frightened” to contemplate what his life would have become without “the movement.” “The movement,” he explained, gave his life “meaning.”
For Jackson, meaning was linked to justice, the enlargement of democratic potential, and politics in the classic, Aristotelian sense of creating a good and virtuous life for the individual and the polity. Far from narcissistic, his life presents an alternative to the individualism and consumerism at the heart of American culture, which beats like a dull thud under countless social media accounts and celebrity endorsements.
His determination carried him to Selma, Alabama, where he met Dr. King while they risked their lives for the right to vote. He earned a position on King’s staff, not only fighting against state-sponsored racism and the Vietnam War, but also for social and economic justice. It carried him to Memphis, where he stood a few feet from King and watched a bullet penetrate King’s chest at the Lorraine Motel.
At King’s funeral, Jackson addressed his friend and hero, whose body lay in a coffin, vowing to promulgate and champion his work, message, and legacy, dedicating himself to advancing the “dream” of racial equality, nonviolence, and the end of systemic poverty.
The work began with the staging of King’s “Poor People’s Campaign” on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., later in 1968, where thousands of impoverished Americans of all races and religions gathered to demand economic opportunities to accompany the employment and voting rights that Congress had passed. The assembly elected Jackson “mayor of Resurrection City.” In that capacity, Jackson led the audience in what would become his signature affirmation, asking them to repeat the words, “I am somebody.”
Those words, in Jackson’s booming and poetic voice, echoing the “I Am a Man” placards of King’s day, would shatter the psychological restraints for millions of people. From the Black poor in inner cities to Chinese immigrants in California, from students at schools across the nation to elderly veterans of war, those who heard Jackson enunciate the personal creed and political conviction of “I am somebody” felt their backs straighten, and their hearts swell. Their feet move to the beat of the protest march and the upward climb.
My mother heard those words. As a dark-skinned white child in the Chicago suburbs, schoolyard bullies would taunt her, shouting epithets because she was the closest substitute for a Black girl. “I am somebody” restored her self-confidence. The three-word phrase found its way to the ears of Lori Lightfoot, who would become Chicago’s first Black woman and first lesbian mayor, crediting her own self-regard to Jackson’s message. The affirmation sparked a revolution of the psyche for Norman Fong, a California organizer of Chinese immigrants, who recalled hating himself after whites tied him to a fence as a young boy. Fong said, “When I heard it,” “I told myself, ‘I am somebody.’ I still tell myself that every day.”
Even as a white boy coming of age in the Chicago suburbs, I intuited that Jackson’s vision promised emancipation. Albert Camus wrote that those living in an oppressive society must aspire to live “neither as victims nor executioners.” When, as a teenager, I first began studying Jackson’s work, I realized I did not need to be an executioner. The ambition to bear witness and promote justice would give my life dignity.
I met Jackson in 2014. In the years that followed, I talked with him countless times, traveled with him, followed him in Chicago, wrote my book, I Am Somebody: Why Jesse Jackson Matters, and developed a friendship I will always treasure.
I learned the core principle of Jackson’s theory and practice. Beyond partisan rancor and ideological wrestling, there is a non-negotiable “somebodiness” of humanity that must be at the top of any political agenda. Jackson’s belief in the inalterable “somebodiness” of every person imbued his leadership with the power of presence.
The handsome football player-preacher was telegenic, but the streets shaped his politics, and that always defined him.
The street is where he protested an apartheid economy. The organization that Jackson founded, Operation PUSH, challenged the racism and narrow-mindedness of major employers, trade unions, and lending institutions to integrate Blacks and Latinos into American commerce, housing, and entrepreneurship. With his dedicated staff and volunteers, he squared off against giants of corporate America, from General Motors to Burger King, to secure thousands of jobs for Black and Latino workers and millions of dollars in ancillary benefits. Critics called it a shakedown, a hustle, but wiser heads saw it as part of the American tradition of leverage. Just as unions had used collective bargaining to secure higher wages, Jackson used the threat of boycotts and bad publicity to pressure employers to hire more minorities. The 1957 Montgomery Bus Boycott didn’t just demand that Rosa Parks and Negroes be able to sit anywhere on the bus but also insisted on the hiring of Negro bus drivers. PUSH succeeded in civilizing the market, because Jackson understood the market’s limits in creating the conditions for justice.
By leveraging the consumer power of the boycott and the citizen power of the vote, he created a formidable apparatus of Black and progressive political representation that could attack a cruel Republican Party and enliven a comatose Democratic Party.
While registering millions of voters during a 1984 “Southern Crusade” tour, Jackson responded to an ever-present, ever-louder chant that served as an invitation: “Run, Jesse, Run!”
His presidential campaigns of 1984 and 1988 demonstrated the power of electoral politics when it harnesses the populist energy of a diverse underclass. With the construction of a “rainbow coalition,” he trumpeted a defiant unity: “If we leave the racial battleground to find economic common ground, we can reach for moral higher ground.”
Jackson marched with Latinos, including undocumented immigrants. He slept in hospices alongside gay men dying of AIDS. He spoke to white family farmers who covered their faces with masks for fear of retaliation from the Farmers’ Bureau for supporting a candidate opposed to big agriculture. He visited reservations to meet with Native American tribal leaders. He rallied with Puerto Ricans in New York and Chinatown residents in Los Angeles. He told white coal miners in Kentucky and Black millworkers in Detroit that their problems were the same, but so was their political potential if they would only unite in class consciousness.
The positions Jackson adopted were often described as “extreme.” Still, many have become consensus left of center politics: universal health care, raising the minimum wage to a living wage, paid family leave, tuition-free community college, full employment through robust infrastructure and public service programs, the support of Nelson Mandela and anti-apartheid movements in South Africa, and a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Despite considerable Black wariness, he was the first presidential candidate to make support for gay rights a key part of his campaign.
With a “poor campaign, rich message,” as he called it, he spoke without electric amplification in church basements in the desolate outposts of the Deep South and high school cafeterias in the inner city. He lost the electoral sprints of the 1980s but won the political marathon. Out of his campaigns came the first Black mayors of Denver, Memphis, Seattle, and New York. Out of his campaign came progressive stalwarts, like Bernie Sanders and Paul Wellstone. Out of his campaign came an infrastructure of Black and diverse political talent, like Donna Brazile, Delmarie Cobb, and James Zogby. Without the Black voters that he ushered into the party, Bill Clinton might not have won in 1992. Without his convincing the Democratic Party to adopt proportional delegate allocation in presidential primaries, Barack Obama would not have won in 2008.
Jackson also understood that having access and influence with political leaders was as powerful as being one of them. He didn’t run in 1992 or later. He knew how to move on to the next stage.
During the eulogy for Rosa Parks, Jackson said that when American leaders talk about “democracy promotion” abroad, they don’t mean “Jeffersonian Democracy.” “It has no export value,” Jackson said. “Who wants a white male, aristocratic so-called ‘democracy’ where women can’t vote? They mean Parks-King democracy.” Jackson was a founder and framer of Parks-King democracy.
In a rare moment of complimentary self-assessment, he once told me, “Some people follow a path. I blazed a trail.”
Some trails he blazed never made it into media cartography. In 1984, he failed to live up to his own standards when he used a slur against Jews. It was a slight that risked fracturing a tragically fragile Black and Jewish alliance. Jackson apologized, asking those who were rightfully disappointed, “Charge it to my head and not my heart.” Unlike many politicians who recite a publicist-crafted apology and move on, Jackson spent decades strengthening his ties with Jews, not only in the United States but around the world. He did extensive work with the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, he advocated for Soviet Jewry, and he regularly collaborated with Chicago synagogues.
For decades, Jackson spent Christmas morning at the Cook County Jail on the South Side of Chicago. During speaking engagements and meetings with inmates, he would offer encouragement, oversee voter registration tables for those who had not been convicted of a felony, and inform them of job training and education programs at PUSH. In 2018, I accompanied him and PUSH staff to the jail, where I met Rabbi Samuel N. Gordon from a nearby suburban temple. He joined the group at Jackson’s request. When I asked why, he said, “I would do anything Reverend Jackson asked.” I assumed wrongly that they were old friends, but they had met only two months earlier, following the mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Gordon had publicized a statewide invitation for religious leaders to join him for an interfaith denunciation of antisemitism. Jackson was the only Christian minister to attend. He stayed for several hours. There were no television cameras in sight.
The last 20 years of Jackson’s life were rich with stories of unglamorous service, unpopular advocacy for justice, and unparalleled commitment to democracy. With devoted staff and volunteers, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, under Jackson’s leadership, fed the homeless, educated the young, welcomed the despised, and remained steadfast in the fight against hatred in Chicago, the United States, and around the world.
In 2015, during the annual dinner for the poor, Jackson demonstrated that his calling governed his own behavior. Wearing a chef’s hat and helping to distribute the mashed potatoes at a Thanksgiving dinner for the poor at the headquarters of Rainbow/PUSH, Jackson greeted each person in line. A man who, despite the frigid Chicago November, was wearing a t-shirt, nervously ran his hands through his long, purple-dyed hair. He asked for more mashed potatoes, the only thing on his plate. He had turned down the turkey, vegetables, stuffing, and cornbread. Jackson said, “I’ll see what I can do,” before explaining that he had to ensure there was enough for everyone. When the influx of diners slowed, Jackson went to the kitchen for more mashed potatoes, and, learning there was plenty more, he covered the man’s large plate with nothing but mashed potatoes. He walked it over to him and said, “Here you go.”
I’ll never forget visiting Selma, Alabama, in 2015 for the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. I traveled with the Rainbow/PUSH delegation by bus from Chicago to Selma. At the end of two days of nonstop activity, while Reverend Jackson marched, spoke, gave interviews, and met with local leadership, PUSH volunteers sat on their bus benches, expressing frustration that they could not spend more time with him. His busy schedule simply did not allow for social visits.
Before the bus driver could put the hulking vehicle in gear, we saw a small vehicle with a trailer rounding the corner. Like an injured quarterback, Jackson was stretched across the trailer. Wearing a three-piece suit, his ankles were swollen, knees rickety, and his brow soaked in sweat. With all the strength that remained in his body, he climbed aboard the bus and gave a characteristically powerful speech. Then he took a few steps closer to a volunteer wearing a scarf, her hair gone from chemotherapy. Reverend Jackson led the volunteers in prayer for her healing, recovery, and happiness.
He made his way back to the trailer. As it pulled out of view, he raised a fist in the air.
The rare, but elementary gift of presence, in accordance with the methodology and philosophy of the Civil Rights movement, placed him at the front of marches for Black victims of hate crimes, the disabled, LGBTQ Americans, and wounded combat veterans—all when these causes were far out of fashion—and it is what led him to tell mourners at the funeral for his friend, Aretha Franklin, “I’ll never stop marching. When I can no longer march, I’ll still be there.”
Had his health allowed it, he would have stood alongside undocumented immigrants and ICE observers in Minneapolis. Unlike elected officials, who offer pat condemnations from the safety of a television studio, Jackson affirmed his political rhetoric with his physical presence. Taking politics from the pathos to the pavement, his solidarity with the disenfranchised demonstrates why Jackson could strive for greatness, and most politicians can only aspire to mediocrity.
Jackson was not a Marxist, and he always found a way to position himself between the militant left and the establishment, not as a calculating operator but as a mediator of justice. The work began in the late 1960s when he acted as a bridge between the old guard of the Civil Rights movement and the Black Panthers. After the FBI and Chicago Police conspired to murder Fred Hampton, fellow Black Panther Bobby Rush feared that he was next, as the CPD had issued a warrant, under similar circumstances, for his arrest. Rush took refuge at Operation PUSH. Jackson negotiated a public release of Rush into the custody of a Black officer on the Chicago force. When I asked Rush, who had become a congressman who defended his seat from a 2000 challenge from a young Barack Obama, what he thought of Jackson, he said in the scratchy voice of an elderly man, “Jesse Jackson saved my life.”
I once asked Jackson if he ever considered an independent candidacy. He conceded that in the early 20th Century, at the height of the progressive and populist movements, it would have benefitted the nation if there had been a “Labor Party.” Without such a party, Jackson believed his role was to keep one foot in the Democratic Party and one outside, attempting to broker a meeting between the urgency of activism and the practicalities of politics. He was more successful than most historians and journalists realize. The Democratic Party that became multicultural, elevated women to the forefront, and began to articulate robust positions on expanding the social safety net is largely the party Jackson envisioned.
“Growing up in the Jim Crow South, every day is a negotiation,” Jackson told me when reflecting on his childhood. His talent for negotiation often shamed the State Department. Jackson, enacting only the power of citizen diplomacy, successfully negotiated the release of hostages and political prisoners in Syria, Cuba, Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, Gambia, and Algeria. In the case of Algeria, the government had apprehended a documentary filmmaker from Atlanta, Georgia, on a trumped-up charge that violated any principle of free speech. She was staring down the barrel of ten years in prison. After Trump’s first administration refused to intervene, Jackson convinced the Algerians to release the filmmaker with just a phone call. It received no press coverage.
The press, though, there to magnify every “flaw” (their favorite word, as if Jackson alone possessed them), was conspicuously silent when Jackson tallied victories for freedom and justice, often saving lives. And they still cannot stop working as dull cartoonists. The obituary in The New York Times zeroes in on his “ego,” quoting the likes of Stanley Crouch and Marion Barry. In its closing passages, it cites an academic concluding that “moral leaders” like Jackson are no longer necessary because we have “elected officials.”
One can flip a coin to determine if that position is stupid or insidious. As the Republican Party descends into the mania of hatred and violence, moral leadership is precisely what is essential. Moral leadership of the Jackson style is radical in the classic sense of “getting to the root.” For Jackson, the root of social and political pathology lay in a transformation of law by an ethic of defiant solidarity.
My last moment with Jackson came in December. He was in a nursing home, bedridden and barely able to speak. One of his aides and I sat by him, watching CNN, under the impression that the reverend was asleep. We began to discuss the grotesque capitulation of major institutions in the face of Trump’s assault on civil society. I mentioned The Washington Post, CBS News, and corporate America. Before Jackson’s aide could respond, Jackson opened his eyes and said with something of a roar, “Harvard.” He was referring to reports that the Ivy League university would surrender to Trump’s demand of a $500 million payout to the federal government as punishment for policies he deemed objectionable. Jackson was listening. He was angry.
His aide left the room to give us privacy. I thanked Reverend Jackson for his leadership and friendship. I promised him I would continue telling his story and promoting his message. I told him how proud I am of the years we spent together. With that, he turned, reaching for my hand. We held hands in silence for 10 or 15 minutes. Then, I said, “goodbye,” knowing the weight of the word. He gestured for me to come closer. I put my ear to his lips. He whispered, “I love you.”
There is a poetic symmetry in the last words that I heard Jackson utter. “Harvard” and “I love you” capture the love and rage that fueled his life, not as separate emotions, but interlocked impulses to right the wrongs of the world, heal the wounds of oppressive trauma, end wars and violence, and create a democracy that could overcome political and economic attempts at domination. He felt rage on behalf of those who, like him, were bullied by men with power. He also loved them.
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