Jesse Jackson: A towering figure of the movement

Jesse Jackson in 1975 (Pic: Public Domain)

“And although it seems heaven sent, we ain’t ready to see a Black president.” The iconic hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur may well have called to mind the Reverend Jesse Jackson when he wrote the lyrics to Changes, one of his most powerful and poignant songs.

Jackson, who has died at the age of 84, was a two time presidential candidate. He was present at two landmark moments in Black American history that straddled the centuries.

He was at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee when an assassin’s bullet tore into the neck of civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King Jr on 4 April 1968. Some 40 years later, a television camera captured him in tears among the crowd in Grant Park Chicago when Barack Obama was declared the first black president of the United States.

Through the intervening decades and beyond, Jackson was quite literally a towering figure in the fight for racial justice.

Born in segregated South Carolina in 1941, Jackson approached maturity as the Civil Rights movement erupted onto the political scene. As a student he joined a march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, where he came to the attention of King.

He was invited to join King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and rapidly rose to become the national director of its Operation Breadbasket economic justice programme.

He remained with SCLC until 1971, but was clearly something of a divisive figure. Other leading members felt that he was a little too fond of self-promotion.

He had notoriously appeared on TV the day after King’s death wearing the same blood stained sweater, claiming to have cradled the stricken preacher’s head and been the last person he spoke to. The implication was that the leadership baton was symbolically passed on to him directly by the dying man.

And yet the testimony of those present indicated that Jackson was on the floor below the balcony at the moment when King was shot.

After leaving SCLC Jackson founded Operation Push (People United to Save Humanity)—“Save” was later changed to “Serve”.

The following year he appeared on the legendary children’s TV show Sesame Street. Decked out in platform shoes, a medallion and sporting an impressive Afro haircut he can be seen encouraging a mixed group of children to chant “I am somebody”, a bold declaration of pride and self-confidence.

It was this belief that all can aspire and achieve that Jackson carried forward into his presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988. The philosophy and campaign were formalised in what became known as a Rainbow Coalition.

Though unsuccessful electorally Jackson clearly inspired others, not least Obama who paid him warm tributes both in the aftermath of his own victory and on the day of his death.

Jackson was right to assert that race and class should not be a barrier to achievement. But there are fundamental problems with the political strategy that he pursued.

His efforts were primarily aimed at winning the nomination of the Democratic Party. Formerly the party of Southern racists known as Dixiecrats, its commitment to racial justice was at best, equivocal if not openly hostile.

At the height of the Civil Rights movement, the supposedly great liberal president John F Kennedy baulked at passing equal rights legislation. He sought to discipline and, if necessary, discredit King and the wider struggle.

The mass mobilisations and campaigns that Jackson had been part of broke open the space for a cohort of black people to move into positions of power and authority. But the leaders that emerged invariably sought to channel the energy of the masses into supporting the Democratic Party. As Obama’s presidency demonstrates, this was a road that eventually led to Donald Trump.

Jackson’s commitment to justice remained undimmed to the end. Despite being severely restricted by Parkinson’s disease, he supported the Black Lives Matter upsurge in 2020.

Since his death, eulogies have been paid by activists and organisations from across the world whose work was supported by his Rainbow Push Coalition. In Britain this included the Stop The War Coalition and Stand Up to Racism.

Jackson’s death comes at a time when Trump is systematically seeking to dismantle the civil rights gains that Jackson’s generation promoted and when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are terrorising people on the streets. In the face of these murderous assaults, new layers of people are being driven into struggle.

They should salute Jesse Jackson, but must find new and more radical ways of organising.