Jesse Jackson’s Life of Value

A Champion for the Oppressed: Who Was Jesse Jackson?

Reverend Jesse Jackson, who died last week at the age of 84, was not just the American civil rights leader, he was an icon who championed the rights of black, poor and working-class people with his ‘rainbow coalition’. And as a notable black politician he blazed the trail, and encouraged many black politicians to vie for the highest office in the US, when he boldly ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988.

“Our father was a servant leader – not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world,” declared the Jackson family in a statement.

“We shared him with the world, and in return, the world became part of our extended family. His unwavering belief in justice, equality, and love uplifted millions, and we ask you to honour his memory by continuing the fight for the values he lived by.”

From Civil Rights Activist to Trailblazing Politician

Jackson was a leader in the civil rights movement and the Democratic politics. He had been in politics since the early 1960s, and he was a close ally of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Jackson once described himself, in a media interview, as someone who stepped up politically against all odds.

“I was a trailblazer, I was a pathfinder. I had to deal with doubt and cynicism and fears about a Black person running. There were Black scholars writing papers about why I was wasting my time. Even Blacks said a Black couldn’t win.”

The Historic Moment That Made Jesse Jackson Weep: Barack Obama’s Election

This explained why he was elated and cried openly when, 20 years after his last campaign for the presidency, Barack Obama, a black man became the 44th president of the United States. Obama acknowledged Jackson’s contributions to his eventual emergence as president.

In a media report on Obama’s emergence as president, Jackson had described that historic moment as “a big moment in history”. Jackson had earlier spoken, in another media report, saying: “I cried because I thought about those who made it possible who were not there … People who paid a real price: Ralph Abernathy, Dr King, Medgar Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, those who fought like hell [at the Democratic national convention] in Atlantic City in 64, those in the movement in the south.”

Racial Inequality and the Fight Against Systemic Injustice

Jackson got into politics at an early age. Coming from a segregated south, his politics centred on issues of racial equality and the need to defend the poor and the defenceless. This, for instance, saw him campaigning against disparities in care and outcomes following the Covid pandemic.

He had asked: “After 400 years of slavery, segregation and discrimination, why would anybody be shocked that African Americans are dying disproportionately from the coronavirus?”

He also accused past American presidents of failing to “end the virus of white superiority and fix the multifaceted issues confronting African Americans”.

Jesse Jackson’s Presidential Campaigns: A Mission Beyond Politics

This probably informed his decision to run, in 1984, as a Democratic candidate for president. He became the second Black person, after Shirley Chisholm, a decade earlier, to launch a nationwide campaign.

“Tonight we come together bound by our faith in a mighty God, with genuine respect and love for our country, and inheriting the legacy of a great party, the Democratic party, which is the best hope for redirecting our nation on a more humane, just, and peaceful course,” Jackson had declared at the 1984 Democratic national convention in San Francisco, California.

He added: “This is not a perfect party. We’re not a perfect people. Yet, we are called to a perfect mission. Our mission to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to house the homeless, to teach the illiterate, to provide jobs for the jobless, and to choose the human race over the nuclear race.”

Building the Rainbow Coalition After the 1984 Loss

However, Jackson lost and he couldn’t get the party’s nomination. But the experience spurred him to double his humanitarian activities. He thereafter launched into massive activism by creating the National Rainbow Coalition to push for voting rights and social programs. In the mid-1990s, Jackson formed the multiracial group Rainbow Push Coalition. The new coalition focussed on enhancing educational and economic equality.

Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King Jr.: A Bond Forged in the Movement

Jesse Jackson, arguably a titan of the US civil rights movement, met his mentor, Martin Luther King, in the early 1960s when he joined forces with him as a civil rights activist. King had offered him a position at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the civil rights group that he co-founded. King was, however, assassinated on 4 April 1968.

“Every time I think about it, it’s like pulling a scab off a sore,” Jackson reportedly said about King’s murder in 2018. He continued: “It’s a hurtful, painful thought: that a man of love is killed by hate; that a man of peace should be killed by violence; a man who cared is killed by the careless.”

Carrying King’s Legacy Forward: The Push Organisation

In 1971, Jackson left SCLC to set up the People United to Save Humanity (Push) organisation. The idea behind the new organisation was to improve black people’s economic conditions. The organization hosted reading programs for Black youth and helped them find jobs, and also encouraged corporations to hire more Black managers and executives.

Jesse Jackson on Dr King’s Vision — and the Trump Era

Jackson embraced King’s ideas wholeheartedly and worked hard to push the global civil rights agenda forward. For more than half a century and through some of the most difficult periods of American history, Jesse Jackson remained relevant and in the forefront until the rise of Black Lives Matter.

“Dr King believed in multiracial, multicultural coalitions of conscience, not ethnic nationalism,” revealed Jesse Jackson in a media report in 2018, adding that King “felt nationalism – whether Black, white or brown – was narrowly conceived, given our global challenges. So having a multiracial setting said much about his vision of America and the world, what America should stand for as well as the world.”

He continued: “The arc of the moral universe is long and it bends towards justice, but you have to pull it to bend. It doesn’t bend automatically. Dr King used to remind us that every time the movement has a tailwind and goes forward, there are headwinds.

“Those who oppose change in some sense were re-energised by the Trump demagoguery. Dr King would have been disappointed by his victory but he would have been prepared for it psychologically. He would have said: ‘We must not surrender our spirits. We must use this not to surrender but fortify our faith and fight back.'”

Early Life, Family and Personal Legacy

Jesse Jackson was born on 8 October 1941 in Greenville, South Carolina. He started politics at a very early age when he was elected class president at the all-Black Sterling high school. He was very good in athletics. In 1959, he received a football scholarship to the University of Illinois.

Jackson met his future wife Jacqueline, at the college. They married in 1962 and later had five children – Santita, Jesse Jr, Jonathan Luther, Yusef DuBois, and Jacqueline Jr. He had a sixth child, Ashley, a result of an extramarital affair with Karin Stanford in the early 2000s.

A Nation Honours Jesse Jackson: The Presidential Medal of Freedom

Bill Clinton, former American president honoured Jesse Jackson in 2000 with America’s highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for his lifetime work on increasing opportunities for people of colour.