Rev. Jesse Jackson offered powerful support to Asian Americans

When harassment and violence against Asian Americans surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Rev. Jesse Jackson condemned the heinous acts early on. He was outspoken at a time when many people didn’t realize or believe that anti-Asian racism was real or could happen.

Jackson wrote several Sun-Times columns in solidarity with Asian Americans. In March 2021, he wrote that violence targeting them was “stoked to no small degree by more than a year of Trump obsessively describing the coronavirus as the ‘China Virus’ and ‘Kung Flu.’”

Asians in the U.S. were spat on and threatened, including my elderly mother on her way to work. Jackson said, “The scapegoating of Asian Americans is taking an ugly, violent turn.”

Weeks later, Jackson wrote about the murder of eight people near Atlanta, six of them Asian women ages 44 to 74.

Videos of Asians being brutally attacked and murdered underscored that anti-Asian hate was real and dangerous. They were stabbed on the street in San Francisco; kicked in the stomach on their way to church in New York; pummeled more than 100 times in an apartment vestibule; and head-stomped to death.

Jackson died Feb. 17 at age 84. Services were held Monday in South Carolina, where he was born and raised until he was 15. A “People’s Celebration” in Chicago will be held at 10 a.m. Friday, at House of Hope, 752 E. 114th St.

For those who know Jackson, it was unsurprising that he spoke up against anti-Asian hate. It was in keeping with the mission of his nonprofit Rainbow Coalition, which dates back to the 1970s and unites people for social justice. It represents the marginalized: Black Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Arab Americans, gays and lesbians, poor people, family farmers, workers and more.

‘Jesse Jackson saw us’

Community leaders remember Jackson’s support of the Asian American community dating back decades. In 1982, Vincent Chin was bludgeoned to death by two men with a baseball bat in Detroit after his bachelor party. There were witnesses, yet Chin’s murderers never served any prison time.

In 1984, Jackson rallied in San Francisco’s Chinatown alongside Vincent’s grieving mother, Lily, an immigrant from China, who fought for justice for her son.

“He brought national attention to the Vincent Chin case at a time when major news outlets were writing it off as a local matter,” activist Eddie Wong told the Sun-Times. “In a word, Jesse Jackson saw us.” Wong was the national field director of Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign in Chicago.

The Rev. Norman Fong, a community leader and pastor at Presbyterian Church in San Francisco’s Chinatown, told the Sun-Times: “When Rev. Jackson shared the stage with Vincent Chin's mom — it was a moment of solidarity that brought tears to my eyes. Chinatown felt so uplifted with his solidarity. It was so powerful!”

Afterward, Jackson’s speech at a Chinatown rally “was of course covered by all the press like never before. It was a ‘rainbow moment in action,” recalled Fong. His support “showed Black-Asian solidarity at the perfect moment.” Jackson compared Chin’s murder with the lynching of Emmett Till that helped spark the Civil Rights Movement.

Jackson “is a hero to me,” said Fong, a Rainbow Coalition member. “He taught me to really appreciate what he called ‘solidarity in the struggle.’ "

Activist Mabel Teng was also at Jackson’s 1984 appearance in San Francisco. “It was the first time the Chinese community was embraced by a civil rights leader, embraced by yourself, and it made a significant and everlasting impression,” Teng told Jackson in a 2020 Zoom call transcribed in the digital magazine East Wind. “When the community was in need, you were the one to step into the situation.”

Jackson inspired Teng to run for elected office in San Francisco. Over the years, Jackson encouraged Asian American and Pacific Islander representation in government and leadership roles.

In the Sun-Times, he also spotlighted history that many people are unaware of, since Asian Americans are rarely included in U.S. education curricula. Jackson called for reparations for Japanese Americans; 120,000 of them were imprisoned by the U.S. government during World War II. He cited the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act that made it illegal for Chinese to immigrate to the U.S. And Jackson highlighted the largely forgotten Rock Springs Massacre of 1885 when “white mobs in Wyoming murdered 28 Chinese coal miners and burned Chinatown to the ground.”

More of that history will be learned today; Jackson pushed to include Asian American history in school curricula in New York and elsewhere. In 2021, Illinois became the first state to pass legislation requiring that schools teach Asian American history.

In his landmark 1984 appearance in San Francisco with Lily Chin and the Asian American community, Jackson said, “Those who live — we must redefine America so everybody knows everybody fits in the rainbow somewhere.” Indeed, as Jackson is laid to rest in Chicago this week, those who live must continue that mission.

Amy Yee is a reporter for the Sun-Times. She is the author of “Far From the Rooftop of the World: Travels among Tibetan Refugees on Four Continents,” with a foreword by the Dalai Lama.