The Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Legacy
The civil rights icon had a unique way of raising candidates and galvanizing the vote.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson’s “Keep Hope Alive!” mantra remains a guiding principle as the world mourns the loss of the iconic civil rights hero, who died Tuesday at age 84.
The legacy of the Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson, born in 1941 in Greenville, South Carolina, is vast, from being in the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s inner circle in the civil rights movement of the 1960s to running for president of the United States twice to being a hostage negotiator freeing hostages in Cuba, Syria, Iraq, and Kosovo in the 1980s. Among his many milestones, he founded Rainbow Push, headquartered in Chicago, to protect, defend, and gain civil rights.
The Jackson family announced the death this morning. “Our father was a servant leader — not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world,” the Jackson family said 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 honor his memory by continuing the fight for the values he lived by.”
Indeed, his death is a great blow to the next generation of political strategists and leaders.
Democratic strategist Donna Brazile said in a text this morning, when I gave my condolences, “We are in mourning.”
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson told me on The Tea With April Ryan when Jackson was hospitalized in November, “I continue to draw strength from Rev. Jackson.” Johnson reminded us that “the Freedom movement in the north came right through the city of Chicago.” King put Jackson in charge of the civil rights activities in the north, based in Chicago. “Dr. King said if we can figure it out in Chicago, we can figure it out anywhere in the world,” Johnson recalled.
Many of those who worked with him became major household names and political figures, including the late Democratic National Committee Chair Ron Brown; the late former Clinton Labor Secretary Alexis Herman; Democratic strategists Minyon Moore, Leah Daughtry, and Brazile; New York’s first Black mayor, David Dinkins; and the nation’s first Black governor since Reconstruction, Douglas Wilder.
Jackson had a unique way of raising candidates and galvanizing the vote. As a young politician, Barack Obama called on Jackson’s voter registration campaigns to help people understand their voting power.
Though Jackson at times considered himself an old country preacher, he knew how to galvanize strategic allies. He had the ear of many presidents, but he was crucial to one in particular: Bill Clinton.
In Clinton’s second term, Jackson was front and center in helping to heal the nation’s racial divide. He was at the White House frequently in that tumultuous second term, offering advice, strategy, and anything Clinton needed. Jackson was the architect of the Clinton administration’s efforts to bridge the digital divide that persists in many parts of the nation and that disproportionately affects minority communities.
Jackson boosted Clinton’s efforts to advance economic empowerment in the Black community, hosting the Wall Street Project in the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
And, in the historic multi-nation Clinton trip to Sub-Saharan Africa, Jackson told Black reporters who wanted to remember their enslaved ancestors to pour libations for them during a ceremony at the Door of No Return on Gorée Island, Senegal. (This reporter was a part of the event, which Jackson was instrumental in directing.)
Jackson’s advocacy continued well into his recent illness. One of his sons, Rep. Jonathan Jackson, shared insights into his father’s thinking last year.
The younger Jackson told me at the Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Conference in September that his father, who had difficulty speaking at the time, would say, “It is time to resist with all your might!” And he revealed that his father talked about something he did not think he would see in his lifetime: “the end of Reconstruction”:
It was so … unimaginable. Everything my father fought for — diversity, equity, and inclusion, to make sure that we had a seat at the table, [to] the expansion of the protection of voting — he’s seen dismantled before his very own eyes….
It’s, like, unfathomable, unconscionable, unbelievable that those who oppose Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in life never stopped fighting even in his death for 60 years. They’ve continued to try to dismantle all the great work that [we’ve] achieved.
The younger Jackson reminded us of what his father thinks: “The same people who are not fighting today would not have been fighting yesterday.”
The elder Jackson, through his congressman son, said, “You’re in the civil rights fight of your life, and it’s today!”
Perhaps that’s why the best way to mourn the Rev. Jesse Jackson is to continue to put in the hard work — because the fight for our rights, for civil rights, for human rights is unyielding, just as Jackson was.
April Ryan, host of The Contrarian’s The Tea With April Ryan, is the longest-serving Black woman reporter in the White House press corps. She is the author of “Black Women Will Save the World,” “The Presidency in Black and White: My Up-Close View of Three Presidents and Race in America,” “Under Fire: Reporting from the Front Lines of the Trump White House,” and “At Mama's Knee: Mothers and Race in Black and White.”
Confronted with the racist and white nationalist attack on our nation from one of our federal agencies (DHS) and the resident of the White House, we need Rev. Jackson's words, "Keep Hope Alive!" to continue to sound through the country. He ruffled feathers by bringing attention to issues that needed to be addressed. Like John Lewis and Dr. King, he looked toward the future.
He carried the fire when the Epstein class tried to smother it, and showed us how to keep it burning. Thank you, Reverend Jessie Jackson. Rest In Power.
Thank you for your heartfelt tribute, April.