The Reverend Jesse Jackson died at 84 of illness on February 17.  His memorial service was held on March 6 at the headquarters of the service organization he founded in Chicago, Operation Push. Everyone was invited. More than 1000 attended.

 

(All photos are screenshots unless otherwise credited).

 

Prominent people and members of his family addressed those who came to the memorial.

 

Live music was played.  A chorus lifted its voices.  People swayed, clapped.

 

Opal Staples sang.

Jesse Jackson’s grandsons mounted the podium and read from the New Testament.

Jennifer Hudson sang.

 

There was more singing and clapping.  Roof-liftingly joyful.

 

 

And then rose three men, and one woman who have won the glittering North American prizes: presidents (Clinton, Obama, Biden) a vice-president (Kamala Harris),

along with the owner of the Chicago Cubs, the governor of Illinois, social activist preachers known throughout the land; the mayor of Chicago, a famous sportsman, successful moneymen; one of his sons spoke.  Jesse Jackson’s long-time lawyer spoke: she spoke in 3 languages.

 

 

Heavyweights of the Democratic Party in the front row

 

They all echoed, but ever-so faintly, the great prophetic voice of Jesse Jackson which, for his tenacity and boldness, they knew very well. Barack Obama alone lifted his voice in a swell of condemnation of our current political disorders.

 

This voice came out of the African American prophetic tradition, structured on the Biblical faith of African Americans: carrying the imprecation, urgency, promise, hope and cadence of the Bible. 

 

Nevertheless, an autonomous voice, owing fealty only to those he served:  very skilled and always pungent.  Sometimes booming and sometimes sinuous. Sometimes whispering so that you had to shift forward to catch the words. 

With one message to the prominent and the powerful:

 

YOUR JOB IS TO ATTEND TO THE NEEDS AND OPPORTUNITIES OF THOSE WHO CANNOT ATTEND TO THESE THEMSELVES. 

LET US WORK ON THE STRATEGY.  AND THE TACTICS.  I HAVE IDEAS. I CAN WORK WITH YOU….LISTEN….

 

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1941:  born in straightened circumstances to a single mother in South Carolina, Jesse Jackson came to be raised by his stepfather and his mother;  and to know and be close also, later, to his father. 

 

1965: Jesse Jackson participated in the Selma to Montgomery marches organized by the Reverend Martin Luther King and others and came to King’s attention for his focus, ambition and skills.

 

1966: It was while he was undertaking a master’s degree at a seminary that Jesse Jackson joined the Civil Rights movement. 

 

From the mid-1960s to a few years before his death, Jesse Jackson worked to develop non-violent institutions and processes to include the excluded in education, business, local and national sports, public office.

 And to instill in  young African Americans an active acceptance of their own self-worth and autonomy, psychological, political and spiritual.

 

 

Jesse Jackson with Martin Luther King on April 3rd, 1968 when Dr. King gave his last speech at a rally at Mason Temple, Memphis, TN. Photo credit unknown

 

 

1966:  Jesse Jackson became the head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s  (S.C.L.C.)  Operation Breadbasket, a national economic development campaign whose goal was to use boycotts as a way to pressure white businesses to hire Black workers and to purchase goods and services from Black contractors.   Its base was in Chicago.

 

 

Mr. Jackson at a demonstration by Operation Breadbasket at Civic Center Plaza in Chicago in 1969. Chicago Sun-Times collection, via Chicago History Museum

 

 

April 1968: he was accompanying Dr. King when the latter was shot and killed in Memphis, TN.

1971: Jesse Jackson was suspended from his role leading Operation Breadbasket as a result of dispute with the leadership of the SCLC. 

 

From this time on, Jesse Jackson was able to develop his own means and methods to the end of social justice, free from the institutional control of the Civil Rights movement as it existed then.

 

1971: Jesse Jackson started People United to Save (later ‘Serve’) Humanity (PUSH).  Its first goal was to pressure politicians to work to improve economic opportunities for blacks and poor people of all races. The boycott was one of Jesse Jackson’s most effective tools.

 

 

 

Jesse Jackson with Ronald Reagan at  Operation Push HQ, Chicago in August 1980

 

 

In 1984, Jesse Jackson established the National Rainbow Coalition as a vehicle for a populist presidential campaign. He ran in the Democratic primaries twice in 1984 and 1988, losing both times.

 

 

During one of his many trips to Arizona, Jesse Jackson met with crowds in April 1984. Photo taken by The Republic

 

 

One of Jesse Jackson’s most famous injunctions is to repeat: I AM SOMEBODY, a near-chant, rhythmic, used to motivate students.

 

The Rev. Jesse Jackson embraced Athan Gibbs Jr., 12, after he recited Martin Luther King’s famous civil rights speech delivered in Washington, D.C. in 1963.  April 1984.

Gibbs, an Elementary School student, had written his own introduction and conclusion to the recital.  Credit: Callie Shell / The Tennessean

 

 

In 1987,  PUSH and the Rainbow Coalition merged with a continuing focus on economic inclusion and programs for housing and social services, (PUSH priorities) and voter registration and political canvassing and education (Rainbow Coalition focus). 

The organization is funded by contributions from businesses and individuals.

 

 

Jesse Jackson with Bill Clinton in Atlanta, GA in 1992 when Bill Clinton was the Democratic nominee for president. Luke Frazza/Agence France-Presse

 

 

Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton spoke during a justice rally at the Capitol, Washington, DC August, 2006. Credit: Mike Ewen/Tallahassee Democrat

 

 

 

 Jesse Jackson with Barack Obama, then a senator, in 2005.  Jeff Roberson/Associated Press 

 

 

 

Jesse Jackson cried on the night of Nov. 4, 2008, as he and a crowd in Grant Park in Chicago celebrated the news that Senator Barack Obama of Illinois was projected to become president. Credit:Damon Winter/The New York Times

 

 

2017: Despite a diagnosis of illness, Jesse Jackson remained politically active, speaking, preaching, marching, deal-making, engaging political leaders.  His work has also been international for at least 25 years.  

 

In 2023, Jesse Jackson retired from his leadership of the Rainbow Push Coalition. 

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It is hard to recount the effect of Jesse Jackson’s work. 

It is unlikely that Barack Obama and scores of Federal, state, and municipal office holders who are not white, and not male, would have been elected without the impetus of the Rainbow Coalition. 

 

The Democratic Party, now struggling for survival, might not be struggling if it had heeded Jesse Jackson’s message and worked, as he did, to center the lives of the poor, the exploited, the under-employed, the under-educated, the badly served of all races.

 

The presence of minority citizens in important economic jobs in the private and public sectors is difficult to imagine without the work of PUSH. 

Movements to safeguard the life and liberty of minorities of race, sex, and gender owe Jesse Jackson for his push for equality among peoples in private and in public and for his continuous campaigns on behalf of these movements. 

 

The effect on young minorities of the simple slogan, I AM SOMEBODY, cannot be quantified. 

 The effect of another of Jesse Jackson’s bons mots – KEEP HOPE ALIVE – is working on us now that we live under the double sign of unrestrained Mammon and Might-Makes-Right; with their side-kicks:  Cruelty, Hate, Exclusion, and, for so many, Human Diminishment; and even early Death.

 

Jesse Jackson took his oratorical style from the prophetic tradition.  He excoriated and praised with equal passion. 

He studied the workings of the worldly power but was not intimidated by it.

He did his work without the need for or expectation of the wealth of this world. This work is the second part of the prophetic tradition.

He worked with people who wanted to work with him; but moved on his own to organize resources if he thought he should.

He was, not infrequently, abundantly criticized for his zealous egotism and for the loss of air sucked out of rooms he entered. 

 

But has there ever been a prophet who was a wall-flower?  A namby-pamby? A please-listen-to-me-because-you-are-going-to-love-what-I-am-saying?

Jesse Jackson’s voice is stilled.  His work remains.

 

 

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