Reverend Jesse Jackson’s death at 84 marks the end of a civil rights titan whose legacy spans MLK Jr.’s protégé, the Rainbow Coalition’s inclusive messaging (lavender stripe for LGBTQIA+), and shadow advocacy for D.C. statehood. His disputed bloodstained sweater from King’s assassination in 1968—criticized by Ralph Abernathy and Hosea Williams—sparked controversy but cemented his role as a polarizing yet transformative figure, reshaping Democratic primaries for Obama and Sanders while championing universal healthcare. Callers highlight his economic focus, working-class solidarity (NAFTA protests), and lasting influence on marginalized communities, though some lament civil rights setbacks under Trump’s era. Jackson’s campaigns democratized politics, but his ambition clashed with King’s legacy, leaving a complex but undeniable mark on America’s racial progress. [Automatically generated summary]
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This conversation is hosted by the National Constitution Center live at 10 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 2, C-SPAN Now, our free video app, and on C-SPAN.org.
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And later, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas will talk about political news of the day.
The family of the two-time Democratic presidential candidate and civil rights leader confirmed his death in a statement this morning.
He was 84 years old.
This morning, we begin with your thoughts on the life and legacy of the protégé of Martin Luther King Jr., who went on to found the social justice organization known as the Rainbow Push Coalition.
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Now, Jesse Jackson had been battling a rare neurodegenerative disorder.
His family is sending out a statement early this morning about his death.
This is his obituary.
In the New York Times, it reads, The Reverend Jesse Jackson, whose impassioned oratory and populist vision of a rainbow coalition of the poor and forgotten, made him the nation's most influential black figure in the years between the civil rights crusades of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the election of Barack Obama, died on Tuesday.
He was 84 years old.
Mr. Jackson, they write, picked up the mantle of Dr. King after his assassination in 1968 and ran for president twice long before Mr. Obama's election in 2008.
But he never achieved either the commanding moral stature of Dr. King or the ultimate political triumph obtained by Mr. Obama.
It goes on to say that instead, through the power of his language and his energy and ambition, he became a moral and political force in a racially ambiguous era when Jim Crow was still a vivid memory and black political power more an aspiration than a reality.
We'll show you more of the New York Times obituary this morning, but we want to take you to 1988.
It was 1984.
It was his first run at the presidency.
This is the Reverend Jesse Jackson at the Democratic National Convention.
Do you think he should have won the Democratic nominations in 84 or 88, losing to Walter Mondale?
He came in third in 84, and then it was Michael Dukakis in 88.
He came in second.
unidentified
Yeah, I think it was a little early for Jesse Jackson to aspire to that level.
But I mean, he was still great in what he did.
But if he could have run against Obama, that would have been an interesting thing.
If they were in the same age level, that would have been an interesting debate to see who could have got the nomination because they were both great men, and I'd love to have seen that debate.
We're talking about the life and legacy of the Reverend Jesse Jackson.
unidentified
Good morning, first of all, and greetings yet again from Motown.
I've had the privilege on a couple of occasions to meet the Reverend Jesse Jackson, especially the times when he visited Detroit.
First, when he was campaigning for, I think it was for another candidate.
And again, in 2015, when he was campaigning for at the time, Hillary Clinton, Martin Luther King couldn't have had a better ally in the fight for civil rights than Reverend Jackson.
He was a true hero, and he fought for the rights of everyone.
And just like Dr. King and currently Reverend Al Sharpton, they were all demonized and vilified by racist, conservative white people because of their stance on civil rights.
I think he'll be greatly missed by all who care about those issues.
And a lot of people will either praise him or scorn him.
And I'm sure on the Republican line, there's going to be a lot of trashing of him from white Republicans.
It was just that we were proud to see somebody representing us.
You know, we didn't, you know, back in those days, we were represented as people that dressed up and had class and money and stuff like that.
And, you know, the neighborhood that I grew up in, everybody had good jobs.
We weren't poor black people, but you never saw that on TV.
You saw the struggling in the inner cities.
I'm from rural Appalachia.
You know, I went to high school with white people that never seen black people.
And they were amazed.
You know, we wore $100 shoes too.
You know, so we gave the best of us.
And Donald Trump is the best that white America had to offer.
Shame on you.
Shame on you.
And in a way, I'm proud that it happened during Black History Month.
So we can still, we can be proud that our history, that man, is our history of perseverance.
You know, like he said, joy will come in the morning.
And we're going to wait this out, but we're not going to forget.
And I told my grandson yesterday, he doesn't, you know, they don't teach black history in school.
Yesterday, school was out.
I taught my grandchildren black history because, like I told him, even though you win the beta club and they like you, he's an awesome football player.
My husband was the first black Mr. Bradley in Bradley County, Tennessee.
He went to UT and Knoxville.
Like I told him, but you cannot forget where you come from because it's going to come a day they're going to remind you that you are not white.
Yes, I remember when I was little that when they shot him up, my mom and them, because they were older, they used to cry and look when we watched the TV and it was just crying and crying.
Jesse Jackson's Legacy00:07:43
unidentified
I didn't understand that then, but I understand it now.
You know what I mean?
Jesse Jackson was fighting for us to have a better life.
The Democratic Party now has a primary process that is not winner-take-all.
It allows for people to gain delegates as they go along in the primary process.
Now, that sounds a little arcane until you think about the fact that there are candidates, whether you're talking about Barack Obama or Bernie Sanders, whose candidacies would have basically been dead in the water had Jesse Jackson not changed the rules to allow them to have a shot at the nomination, even if they were not the heavyweights in the race, the obvious favorites.
And that is, I think, for the Democratic Party, that is a symbol of a democratization of their primary process, their nominating process that allows outsiders into the process.
But I think there are many other things.
You know, Jesse Jackson in the 80s was talking about universal health care.
You know, he was talking about, he was talking about the working class in ways that, frankly, the Democratic Party kind of forgot for a couple of decades there and have only now started to reexamine how they talk to working class voters, white working class voters, black working class voters, people of color, whatever.
So he was in that time crafting this message around how you talk to working people and bring them into a tent.
He also ran on forcing the Democratic Party to have a real tent that really took people seriously, that took women seriously, that took black and Hispanic and Asian and Arab American voters seriously.
The big tent Democratic Party that we know today was emboldened, in part created by Jesse Jackson and the voter registration drives that he did, the coalition building that he did.
And then there's the personnel.
If you operate in politics, there are so many alums of Jesse Jackson's campaigns who are running the party, who are operating at the highest levels of party politics today.
And they would not be a part of the process if he had not fought for that, if he had not run.
People like Mignon Moore and Donna Brazil.
These are some of the more prominent names that you would know.
But these are people who came into politics.
Maxine Waters, she was a state legislature in California, but she was also the chair of Jesse Jackson's campaign in 1988 in California.
So there are so many figures whose prominence in Democratic politics comes from Jesse Jackson and his political campaigns, and that is also the lasting legacy.
That's not even including the cabinet secretaries and the Clinton administration and so on and so forth.
It was meant to call together multiple races, whites and blacks, to just assert the ideals of the United States and its founding peacefully and loudly, get on the air.
And he did.
It just, like I said, I'm knocked out by the fact that I'm knocked out by the fact that the clips you chose really portrayed a guy who is arguing for peace and equality and not hating the other guys for not giving us peace and equality.
You know, I think I'd like to make one last change the subject slightly.
I'd like to suggest that C-SPAN try to do a non-partisan Segment with some experts on the strategy of negative campaigning.
That is, I think that's a non strategy of negative campaigning, that is saying the other guys are bad, not spending more time talking about how bad the other guys are rather than how much better I have a better idea as a campaign, as a campaign platform.
That's separate from the hate, okay?
That's just making use of a human nature, sociological fact.
And it's like if you had, you know, if you can imagine, you know, listening to a couple of doctors trying to decide how to solve your health problem, you're in for an operation.
And instead of talking about the facts of what's the best way to save you, start talking to you, the patient, about how bad that other doctor is, how stupid he is, how evil he is.
And then you're supposed to make a decision.
What course of treatment are you supposed to get?
It's a tactic, okay?
It's a tactic that's independent of what you're talking about.
And I think if the United States wants to continue to be a democracy, we've got to end up, our voters have to be able to see through that crap.
You mentioned you've been enjoying the clips from the C-SPAN archives.
There is a whole lot more on Jesse Jackson in our archive.
Some 461 videos over the years dating back to his 1984 campaign, his 1988 campaign, speaking at campaigns after that, every two and four years, very active in politics after that, only in recent years retreating from public life as he's been battling a progressive neurodegenerative disorder.
He died earlier this morning, a statement put out by his family, and we're talking about his life and legacy in this first hour of the Washington Journal today.
I grew up in East LA, Los Angeles, California, in the housing projects.
When I was a freshman in college, I belonged to a group to help minorities succeed in college.
So they asked me when he was at the LA Coliseum, I wasn't even old enough to vote, if he needed bodyguards because they didn't offer any secret service at that time.
And they said, will you be willing to put your life for him?
I was impressed.
I was 17 and three quarters.
I said, yes, I would do it.
It was an honor.
He was approachable.
And Mexican Waters was there too.
She was very young.
And I was inspired by him.
And since then, I've been involved in politics all my life.
But it's sad that he's gone, but he's done a great legacy.
But I just want to know he was out there for everybody, not just blacks.
And condolences to Reverend Jesse Jackson's family.
I am a granddaughter of a grandmother.
I'm 73 years old.
My grandmother was in her early 60s, in the early 60s, in Mansfield, Ohio.
She was the executive director of the YWCA.
And she helped organize a march from Cleveland, Ohio to Cincinnati, Ohio with Mayor Carl Stokes.
And among those people that marched with them were Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, a young Julian Bond, a young Reverend Jesse Jackson, and Mayor Carl Stokes.
Those were the names I remember.
I was very young, seven or eight years old when this occurred.
And they were going to march from Cleveland to Cincinnati to bring the issue of civil rights to the forefront.
These were in the early days.
And my grandmother was, they were going to stop in Mansfield, that's halfway from both cities, to spend the night and be fed.
And my grandmother was opening this shared gym by the YW and the YM, CA, at the time, to let people sleep and eat there, which they did.
And this was on a Saturday.
On Sunday morning, the telephone rang in our home.
And my father was a teacher and a coach at the local high school.
And I was floored because I heard a white man, I'm white, I heard a white man screaming at my father that my grandmother needed to be run out of town because she let those, I won't say the word, the ugly word, sleep in the YWCA, their why, their gymnasium.
Well, long story short, they didn't run her out of town.
She worked all her life to the age of 95 for women's rights, equal rights for all.
I know she would just be so, so appalled at what is happening in our country right now.
And I will just end with this, John.
There's a beautiful song written by Paul McCartney and the great Stevie Wonder.
Ebony and Ivory, side by side on the piano key, living in harmony.
Shadow Senators Advocacy00:02:59
unidentified
Why can't we?
That's always been my question.
Thank you for allowing me to share this little story.
We head to Washington, D.C., where Jesse Jackson served as a shadow senator for a few years, a non-voting but floor rights representative of Washington, D.C. in the United States Senate, one of his later positions.
Franklin is here in D.C. Good morning.
unidentified
Thank you so much for taking my call, and thank you for honoring this giant.
I am from Washington, D.C., and we are particularly here grateful to the Reverend for all the work he did to advance the cause of democracy in D.C. statehood.
I particularly remember when I was an undergraduate at George Washington University, he came to speak at my school, and I not only joined his campaign, but became an advocate for statehood ever since.
I later became the United States shadow member of Congress in 2014 and served three terms and came across him a few times, talked to him a few times, and continued to be inspired by him.
So here in the Washington, in the nation's capital, we mourn his loss.
We send our greatest condolences to his family and really to the nation because this is somebody that inspired us all to continue to be our better nature.
For folks who don't know how D.C. works, how does one become a shadow representative or shadow senator?
And am I right that you're Franklin Garcia?
unidentified
I am.
I am.
Yes, yes, yes.
And so, and I did serve, I mentioned in 2014.
And so you basically get elected like any other member of Congress, except that you don't have the voting power that other members have.
You have to collect signatures.
You have to get voted in based and meet all the requirements of a member of Congress.
So the idea is that when we do become a state, those shadow members will, in essence, be seated.
It follows the footstep of a plan called the Tennessee Plan, which some territories used back in the days, and they forced statehood on Congress instead of waiting for Congress to give them statehood.
That's Larry in Macon, Georgia, a picture in the New York Times obituary has a very young Jesse Jackson in 1966 with the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during a meeting of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference that took place in South Carolina.
Here's what the New York Times obituary has to say about their relationship and Dr. King as a model for Dr. Jackson.
They write: Dr. King became an intellectual and spiritual model for Mr. Jackson, as well as a father figure.
Jesse said the Reverend Ralph David Abernathy, perhaps Dr. King's closest associate, wanted to be Martin.
They go on to say, for all his zeal, Mr. Jackson became the most controversial member of Dr. King's inner circle.
Though he was part of the leadership, he was also, with his base in Chicago, almost an independent actor.
His ego, charisma, and ability to generate press for himself left others in the SCLC suspicious of his ambitions and led to clashes even with Dr. King.
And it all came to a climax in April of 1968.
When Dr. King went to Memphis to show support for striking garbage workers, Dr. King was outside his second floor room at the Lorain Motel, bantering with SCLC colleagues in the parking lot below before going out to dinner when a single rifle shot shattered the moment.
What happened next shadowed the way Mr. Jackson was viewed for decades.
He was one of several aides who rushed toward Dr. King after he was shot.
Later that night, Mr. Jackson hurried back to Chicago, parts of which were in flames in the unrest that followed the assassination.
The next morning, he appeared on the Today Show wearing an olive turtleneck sweater blotted with blood that he had worn the day before in Memphis.
At a memorial convocation of the Chicago City Council that day, he declared, I come here with a heavy heart because on my chest is the stain of blood from Dr. King's head.
He added, He went through literally a crucifixion.
I was there, and I'll be there for the resurrection.
At least once publicly, he indicated that he was the last person to speak with Dr. King and that he had held his bloodied head as Dr. King lay dying.
Others who were there said it never happened.
Mr. Jackson's account changed over time from cradling Dr. King's head to reaching towards it.
If Mr. Jackson had been a figure of suspicion before he became an object of outrage after Dr. King's death, some in Dr. King's inner circle, including his eventual successor, Mr. Abernathy, and Hosea Williams, both of whom rushed to Dr. King when he was shot, questioned the accuracy of Mr. Jackson's account and resented what they saw as his calculated grab to seize the spotlight as the first mourner.
That from the obituary for the Reverend Jesse Jackson, appearing in today's New York Times.
It'll be in the paper New York Times tomorrow.
Lisha is in Eugene, Oregon.
Good morning.
unidentified
Morning.
Yes, my thoughts and compassion are also with the Jackson family today.
I became a Democrat so I could vote for Reverend Jackson in the primaries, and I've been a Democrat ever since.
And it was because of his rainbow coalition.
He had a lavender stripe in his flag.
And that was for me and everyone else in the LGBTQIA community.
He had the courage to support us then, and I supported him.
I must tell you that I had a personal experience of meeting Dr. Jesse Jackson as a chauffeur through some friends of mine in Alexandria, Virginia.
Pam Brown mother, Laura Brown, invited Jesse Jackson to meet with her to ride all the way down to the University of James-Madison, which I had the privilege of chauffeuring them because I was involved in working with my dad, who was a funeral director in Alexandria at the time, Philip Bell Sr.
So he inspired me between the time I was out of college trying to get myself organized to go back to college, which was at the time Howard University.
Then I attended Chain University.
But he deeply inspired me by the fact that he trusted me to drive him, a young guy at the time.
I was only about 19, 20, or 20 years of age.
So he just made such an impression on me.
I think it just made me so aware of the Rainbow Coalition and just working together as people.
And I had also been a first of, you know, attending a school in Virginia that was predominantly all white male.
What's that book about that you wrote, Run in My Shoes?
unidentified
About I went back to school for psychology and education.
And basically, everybody should delve into their psychological development.
So I would say it's race relations and psychological development all put together and how sports also can help you.
Now, Jesse Jackson was a quarterback at, I believe, it's South Carolina State when he attended there because everybody knows he was born in South Carolina.
But again, maybe it was his southern charm or what, but the man was so down to earth and relaxed.