How the Rev. Jesse Jackson transformed American politics
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What was Jesse Jackson's role in the election of Barack Obama?
On November 4th, 2008, a 67-year-old preacher stood in a massive crowd in a park in Chicago and wept. Hello, Chicago! America had just elected Barack Obama as its first black president. That was a big deal. And I wish that Dr. King or Medgar Evers could have been there just for 30 seconds to see the fruit of their labors. And I thought about them and I just wept. It was tears of joy. That preacher, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, wasn't just witnessing history. He had paved the way for it. After a childhood in segregated South Carolina, Jackson joined the civil rights movement. He became a protege of Martin Luther King Jr. He witnessed his assassination in Memphis in 1968. You couldn't tell it was a shot. You didn't hear a shot?
No, until it hit his face. It sounded like a stick of dynamite or a large firecracker. After King's death, Jackson went on to become a giant in the civil rights movement in his own right. With his Rainbow Push coalition, he worked to unite poor and working class Americans of all races in a fight for economic empowerment. You can hear it in his signature chant, heard here on his spoken word album, The Country Preacher.
I may be uneducated, but I am somebody. I may be in jail, but I am somebody.
Eventually, Jackson tried to harness that coalition for his own run for office. In 1984 and again in 1988, Jackson sought the Democratic presidential nomination. He lost both times, but in 1988, he won multiple state primaries and some 7 million votes, nearly a third of the ballots cast. His speech at that year's Democratic National Convention imagined America as his grandmother's patchwork quilt.
She took pieces of old cloth, patches, Wool, silk, gabardine, croaker sack on the patches. Barely good enough to wipe off your shoes with.
How did Jesse Jackson's early life shape his activism?
But they didn't stay that way very long. They stirred their hands on a strong cord. She sewed them together into a quilt. A thing of beauty and power and culture.
The fight for a better future would take more than any one group, Jackson argued.
Farmers, you seek fair prices and you are right. But you cannot stand alone. Your patch is not big enough.
Bound together by a common thread, he said, they were more powerful.
Blacks and Hispanics, when we fight for civil rights, we are right. But our patch is not big enough. Gays and lesbians, when you fight against discrimination and a cure for AIDS, you are right. But your patch is not big enough.
That message never took Jesse Jackson to the White House, but 20 years later, it would echo on in that victory speech in Chicago. To reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth that out of many, we are one, that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism and doubt and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people. Yes, we can. Thank you. Consider this. Reverend Jesse Jackson has died at age 84. His imprint on American politics endures. From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow. It's Consider This from NPR. Jesse Jackson was a trailblazing figure for Black Americans. He also played a big role in shaping the Democratic Party that we know today, which CNN's Abby Phillip explores in her book, A Dream Deferred.
I talked to her about Jackson's political legacy. I've been taking in a lot of the obituaries and articles about Reverend Jackson today. And there was one sentence in the New York Times obit that stuck with me. And I was wondering what you make of this framing. Essentially that Jesse Jackson was the most influential black figure in the years between Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama. You think that's the right way to think about it?
Yeah, I think that is very much an accurate statement. And in many ways, Jesse Jackson was the bridge between Reverend King and Barack Obama. And he was someone who influenced culture, business, politics, international affairs. And you really can't think of another Black figure who had the reach that Jesse Jackson did for the time that he did. And he was, for decades, One of the most well-known people, forget black figures, but one of the most well-known people in America.
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