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| 'We're winning': Jesse Jackson on Martin Luther King, Obama and #blacklivesmatter | |
| (34 minutes later) | |
| “There is a false narrative that the movement stopped and then started again,” says the Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr, when I ask whether he feels in or out of step with the Black Lives Matter movement. “We never stopped,” the 73-year-old civil rights activist says, chiding me subtly for questioning whether there was any sunlight between his decades of activism and today’s activists. | “There is a false narrative that the movement stopped and then started again,” says the Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr, when I ask whether he feels in or out of step with the Black Lives Matter movement. “We never stopped,” the 73-year-old civil rights activist says, chiding me subtly for questioning whether there was any sunlight between his decades of activism and today’s activists. |
| Birthed in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s killing in 2012 in Florida and kicked into high gear a year ago with the killing of Michael Brown in St Louis, Black Lives Matter is a political movement largely led by young protesters unattached to organisations such as Jackson’s Rainbow/Push (People United to Save Humanity) coalition. It has flourished during the time of the nation’s first black president – a historic achievement that Jackson once hoped would be not Barack Obama’s, but his own. | Birthed in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s killing in 2012 in Florida and kicked into high gear a year ago with the killing of Michael Brown in St Louis, Black Lives Matter is a political movement largely led by young protesters unattached to organisations such as Jackson’s Rainbow/Push (People United to Save Humanity) coalition. It has flourished during the time of the nation’s first black president – a historic achievement that Jackson once hoped would be not Barack Obama’s, but his own. |
| Love him or hate him (and many Americans do both), Jackson’s role in the history of black American activism is undeniable. He is adamant that the two main protest movements of the past few years – Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street – are simply modern continuations of the civil rights movement. Yet, despite this, he displays little interest in talking about those who have taken up the causes dearest to his heart. | Love him or hate him (and many Americans do both), Jackson’s role in the history of black American activism is undeniable. He is adamant that the two main protest movements of the past few years – Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street – are simply modern continuations of the civil rights movement. Yet, despite this, he displays little interest in talking about those who have taken up the causes dearest to his heart. |
| Jackson was mentored by Martin Luther King and has had a hand in many civil rights organisations over the past half-century, including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and Operation Breadbasket during the 1960s, the same decade in which he became an ordained minister. The 70s saw him lead the Rainbow/Push coalition and host the Black Expo in Chicago, when he started brokering deals between civil rights, business and politics with a less sceptical relationship to capitalism than King displayed. | Jackson was mentored by Martin Luther King and has had a hand in many civil rights organisations over the past half-century, including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and Operation Breadbasket during the 1960s, the same decade in which he became an ordained minister. The 70s saw him lead the Rainbow/Push coalition and host the Black Expo in Chicago, when he started brokering deals between civil rights, business and politics with a less sceptical relationship to capitalism than King displayed. |
| Despite never having held elective office, Jackson was the second African American to mount a serious effort for the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 1984, garnering 1.4m votes, and even more – 6.6m – in his 1988 bid. In the 90s, he was spiritual adviser to President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky crisis, and became a sort of freelance informal ambassador dispatched to negotiate the release of US hostages overseas, sometimes without the White House’s blessing. | Despite never having held elective office, Jackson was the second African American to mount a serious effort for the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 1984, garnering 1.4m votes, and even more – 6.6m – in his 1988 bid. In the 90s, he was spiritual adviser to President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky crisis, and became a sort of freelance informal ambassador dispatched to negotiate the release of US hostages overseas, sometimes without the White House’s blessing. |
| Jackson became known, too, for being such a focal point of black political power that when famous white Americans did something racist – such as when Seinfeld actor Michael Richards was racially abusive to some black audience members after being heckled onstage – they were expected to apologise to Jackson to receive absolution. Resentment by black Americans who felt Jackson sold forgiveness for hire and didn’t speak for them was parodied on South Park in 2007, when Token Black angrily declared: “Jesse Jackson is not the emperor of black people!” | Jackson became known, too, for being such a focal point of black political power that when famous white Americans did something racist – such as when Seinfeld actor Michael Richards was racially abusive to some black audience members after being heckled onstage – they were expected to apologise to Jackson to receive absolution. Resentment by black Americans who felt Jackson sold forgiveness for hire and didn’t speak for them was parodied on South Park in 2007, when Token Black angrily declared: “Jesse Jackson is not the emperor of black people!” |
| Despite his history of agitation, Jackson’s more recent work with presidents, corporations, foreign governments and establishment media – not to mention the many comforts afforded to him while ensconced in his own empire, on display when we spoke at his headquarters on Chicago’s South Side – has turned many in the Black Lives Matter movement off him. When I was on a panel this spring in San Francisco with Alicia Garza, a co-founder of #BlackLivesMatter, she said Ferguson marked “the first time in my lifetime”‚ in which the Reverends “Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson were begged to leave” the scene of a civil rights crime. | Despite his history of agitation, Jackson’s more recent work with presidents, corporations, foreign governments and establishment media – not to mention the many comforts afforded to him while ensconced in his own empire, on display when we spoke at his headquarters on Chicago’s South Side – has turned many in the Black Lives Matter movement off him. When I was on a panel this spring in San Francisco with Alicia Garza, a co-founder of #BlackLivesMatter, she said Ferguson marked “the first time in my lifetime”‚ in which the Reverends “Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson were begged to leave” the scene of a civil rights crime. |
| Some young people in the streets of Ferguson, particularly angry young black men written off by black elders such as Bill Cosby and civil rights groups, had no use for the likes of Jackson. They saw him as too slow, too accommodating, too lacking in anger for the fight. They weren’t interested when he pushed them on voter registration, particularly since many young people in Missouri have already been barred from voting because of convictions. Black Lives Matter was challenging the structural racism of the entire political system, including how it served black politicians, and blacklivesmatter.com described Jackson as “clearly dethroned from a place of either honour or leadership or relevance”. | Some young people in the streets of Ferguson, particularly angry young black men written off by black elders such as Bill Cosby and civil rights groups, had no use for the likes of Jackson. They saw him as too slow, too accommodating, too lacking in anger for the fight. They weren’t interested when he pushed them on voter registration, particularly since many young people in Missouri have already been barred from voting because of convictions. Black Lives Matter was challenging the structural racism of the entire political system, including how it served black politicians, and blacklivesmatter.com described Jackson as “clearly dethroned from a place of either honour or leadership or relevance”. |
| That caused a backlash against the young movement, Garza recalled, but it also signalled that the movement had “accomplished an interesting feat by calling out respectability politics”, the belief that liberation can only be achieved for and by people who are respectable enough to deserve it. While Jackson engaged in oppositional politics against those in power as a young man, he has often been seen as representative of respectability politics as Black Lives Matter rose. | That caused a backlash against the young movement, Garza recalled, but it also signalled that the movement had “accomplished an interesting feat by calling out respectability politics”, the belief that liberation can only be achieved for and by people who are respectable enough to deserve it. While Jackson engaged in oppositional politics against those in power as a young man, he has often been seen as representative of respectability politics as Black Lives Matter rose. |
| Jackson doesn’t say whether he had been “begged” to leave town, or how that would have made him feel if he had. He is open with history, but guarded with emotion, his deep-set eyes displaying a weary desire to stay engaged in the movement. He talks freely about the past and policy, but does not want to talk much about the personal and the present. Like many older black civil rights figures I have interviewed, he replies to nearly every question about contemporary times with an answer starting sometime between the civil war and the 1960s. “It’s all one story,” he says. | Jackson doesn’t say whether he had been “begged” to leave town, or how that would have made him feel if he had. He is open with history, but guarded with emotion, his deep-set eyes displaying a weary desire to stay engaged in the movement. He talks freely about the past and policy, but does not want to talk much about the personal and the present. Like many older black civil rights figures I have interviewed, he replies to nearly every question about contemporary times with an answer starting sometime between the civil war and the 1960s. “It’s all one story,” he says. |
| When we meet, Jackson bounds out of a black car, surrounded by several young black men all dressed in black. Jackson, too, wears black shoes and black clothes, and, improbably for his age, has mostly black hair. | When we meet, Jackson bounds out of a black car, surrounded by several young black men all dressed in black. Jackson, too, wears black shoes and black clothes, and, improbably for his age, has mostly black hair. |
| I’ve long heard people talk about the “cult of Jesse Jackson”, which would be an unfair way to dismiss the domain he inhabits, including the dozens of children studying at Rainbow/Push the day I visit. But his is a world very different from the two biggest centres of black politics right now, oppositional and respectable: the Black Lives Matter movement and the Obama administration. | I’ve long heard people talk about the “cult of Jesse Jackson”, which would be an unfair way to dismiss the domain he inhabits, including the dozens of children studying at Rainbow/Push the day I visit. But his is a world very different from the two biggest centres of black politics right now, oppositional and respectable: the Black Lives Matter movement and the Obama administration. |
| Jackson’s universe differs from Black Lives Matter in its permanence, how he is centred within it, and the role it affords women. His headquarters since 1971 are located in a modest but decent-sized building with interior cinder-block walls plastered with fading photos of famous Democrats. He is eager to show it off and explain who is who in dozens of ageing images. In the lobby, there is a large, garish cardboard cutout of Jackson with King at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, which looks like an ad for a new album in an old record store. Jackson tells me the photo was taken on 3 April 1968 – the day before King’s assassination and the ensuing controversy about what he did or did not do with King’s blood. | Jackson’s universe differs from Black Lives Matter in its permanence, how he is centred within it, and the role it affords women. His headquarters since 1971 are located in a modest but decent-sized building with interior cinder-block walls plastered with fading photos of famous Democrats. He is eager to show it off and explain who is who in dozens of ageing images. In the lobby, there is a large, garish cardboard cutout of Jackson with King at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, which looks like an ad for a new album in an old record store. Jackson tells me the photo was taken on 3 April 1968 – the day before King’s assassination and the ensuing controversy about what he did or did not do with King’s blood. |
| His office is a very lived-in place. By contrast, my interviews with the informal, often transient leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement have not been in offices, but on the streets of Ferguson, Baltimore and New York. And the women among them – who co-founded the movement and who prominently lead it – are not apt to defer to men. The women around Jackson seem to dote on him as the gravity of their universe. | His office is a very lived-in place. By contrast, my interviews with the informal, often transient leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement have not been in offices, but on the streets of Ferguson, Baltimore and New York. And the women among them – who co-founded the movement and who prominently lead it – are not apt to defer to men. The women around Jackson seem to dote on him as the gravity of their universe. |
| Jackson’s world is also different from Obamaland in how black it is. Jackson’s headquarters is just a few minute’s walk from the president’s Hyde Park home. But, compared with Obama’s Chicago-based re-election campaign (which, in a famous 2012 staff photo, looked almost entirely white) or his White House cabinet (which so lacks diversity that congressman Charlie Rangel once called it “embarrassing as hell”), Jackson’s universe is unapologetically black. During my visit, the only non-black people I see are the Guardian photographers. | Jackson’s world is also different from Obamaland in how black it is. Jackson’s headquarters is just a few minute’s walk from the president’s Hyde Park home. But, compared with Obama’s Chicago-based re-election campaign (which, in a famous 2012 staff photo, looked almost entirely white) or his White House cabinet (which so lacks diversity that congressman Charlie Rangel once called it “embarrassing as hell”), Jackson’s universe is unapologetically black. During my visit, the only non-black people I see are the Guardian photographers. |
| Jackson was born in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1941, a state where he has spent a lot of time lately – both to see his elderly mother, and to visit Charleston after nine black people were slaughtered at Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal church. He seems as agitated by his home state’s drama with the Confederate flag as he is by how state officials have refused to expand Medicaid health cover for the poor largely with federal money – an issue of importance to one of those killed in the church attack, Reverend Senator Clementa Pinckney, who Jackson knew. | Jackson was born in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1941, a state where he has spent a lot of time lately – both to see his elderly mother, and to visit Charleston after nine black people were slaughtered at Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal church. He seems as agitated by his home state’s drama with the Confederate flag as he is by how state officials have refused to expand Medicaid health cover for the poor largely with federal money – an issue of importance to one of those killed in the church attack, Reverend Senator Clementa Pinckney, who Jackson knew. |
| Jackson credits his awakening about civil rights to watching his father experience, and stand up to, discrimination after he returned from the second world war when “black soldiers had to sit behind Nazi prisoners of war on American military bases”. He found early on “that you adjust to the dos and don’ts of segregation” and “learn your place”. His family taught him, he says: “If you have a sense of dignity within you, your body may be on the back of the bus, but your mind is up front.” He first protested about segregation as an 18-year-old, by trying to check out book at a local whites-only library. | Jackson credits his awakening about civil rights to watching his father experience, and stand up to, discrimination after he returned from the second world war when “black soldiers had to sit behind Nazi prisoners of war on American military bases”. He found early on “that you adjust to the dos and don’ts of segregation” and “learn your place”. His family taught him, he says: “If you have a sense of dignity within you, your body may be on the back of the bus, but your mind is up front.” He first protested about segregation as an 18-year-old, by trying to check out book at a local whites-only library. |
| Jackson met King while the latter was en route to accept the 1964 Nobel peace prize, and, in 1965, Jackson travelled to Selma to join him in the historic marches. Over the next few years, Jackson became a close, if ambitious and polarising, member of King’s circle, eventually tasked with running operations for the SCLC in Chicago and then running its national economic development arm, Operation Breadbasket. | Jackson met King while the latter was en route to accept the 1964 Nobel peace prize, and, in 1965, Jackson travelled to Selma to join him in the historic marches. Over the next few years, Jackson became a close, if ambitious and polarising, member of King’s circle, eventually tasked with running operations for the SCLC in Chicago and then running its national economic development arm, Operation Breadbasket. |
| Jackson drew ire when he was reported to have returned to Chicago after King’s killing and worn a shirt stained (under disputed circumstances) with King’s blood. When he was shot, King had been planning a Poor People’s Campaign – wildly unpopular even among the dwindling supporters he had at the end of his life – which was meant to unite poor whites, blacks and Latinos in a shantytown built on the Capitol Mall called “Resurrection City”. | Jackson drew ire when he was reported to have returned to Chicago after King’s killing and worn a shirt stained (under disputed circumstances) with King’s blood. When he was shot, King had been planning a Poor People’s Campaign – wildly unpopular even among the dwindling supporters he had at the end of his life – which was meant to unite poor whites, blacks and Latinos in a shantytown built on the Capitol Mall called “Resurrection City”. |
| What was it like to work on something so unpopular? | What was it like to work on something so unpopular? |
| “It was all unpopular,” Jackson says, criticising America’s short memory on King. The Poor People’s’ Campaign – which Jackson credits as the “origins” of Occupy Wall Street’s tent city in Zuccotti Park – was unpopular, sure. But so were King’s support for the Memphis sanitation worker’s strike, his stance against the Vietnam war, and his belief that three evils of society were “racism, militarism and capitalism”. Even the March on Washington, no matter how much modern America pretends otherwise, was unpopular in its time, Jackson insists. | “It was all unpopular,” Jackson says, criticising America’s short memory on King. The Poor People’s’ Campaign – which Jackson credits as the “origins” of Occupy Wall Street’s tent city in Zuccotti Park – was unpopular, sure. But so were King’s support for the Memphis sanitation worker’s strike, his stance against the Vietnam war, and his belief that three evils of society were “racism, militarism and capitalism”. Even the March on Washington, no matter how much modern America pretends otherwise, was unpopular in its time, Jackson insists. |
| Forty years after King’s assassination, on a November night in Chicago’s Grant Park, Jackson had tears streaming down his face as Barack Obama addressed the world as the first African American president elect. But ask him about the black man from his neighbourhood who ascended to the office he ran twice to attain, and Jackson gives a politician’s answer that he’s long supported Obama and “voted for him 10 times”. | Forty years after King’s assassination, on a November night in Chicago’s Grant Park, Jackson had tears streaming down his face as Barack Obama addressed the world as the first African American president elect. But ask him about the black man from his neighbourhood who ascended to the office he ran twice to attain, and Jackson gives a politician’s answer that he’s long supported Obama and “voted for him 10 times”. |
| Jackson’s claims about his own role in Obama’s rise are surprisingly modest: specifically, that reforms in the Democratic nomination process he fought for in his campaigns helped Obama edge ahead of his primary opponent, Hillary Clinton. But the summer before he was elected, a live mic caught Jackson saying that Obama was “talking down to black people”‚ and that he wanted “to cut his nuts off,” a phrase that evoked the historical castration of black men during the lynching era. He said he had been “inappropriate”, when caught, but claimed he was speaking about “angst” of tone rather than concern over policy. | Jackson’s claims about his own role in Obama’s rise are surprisingly modest: specifically, that reforms in the Democratic nomination process he fought for in his campaigns helped Obama edge ahead of his primary opponent, Hillary Clinton. But the summer before he was elected, a live mic caught Jackson saying that Obama was “talking down to black people”‚ and that he wanted “to cut his nuts off,” a phrase that evoked the historical castration of black men during the lynching era. He said he had been “inappropriate”, when caught, but claimed he was speaking about “angst” of tone rather than concern over policy. |
| “Black men, it’s obvious, we are targeted more by police,” Jackson says, and his frustration with candidate Obama was feeling that “unless you’re going to deal with how we are targeted, don’t advise us on how we express our pain”. He now credits Obama with “a tremendous job” while facing challenges matched only by those of Lyndon Johnson and Abraham Lincoln. | “Black men, it’s obvious, we are targeted more by police,” Jackson says, and his frustration with candidate Obama was feeling that “unless you’re going to deal with how we are targeted, don’t advise us on how we express our pain”. He now credits Obama with “a tremendous job” while facing challenges matched only by those of Lyndon Johnson and Abraham Lincoln. |
| It is incredibly hard to get Jackson to say anything personal about his present self. After hearing him recall soaking up King’s then contemporary books as a young activist, I want to know what he thinks of Ta-Nehisi Coates. How does he feel that, in the US, this summer’s bestselling author on race hails not from the black Christian activist tradition, but from a place of secular atheism that is not especially optimistic? Has he read Coates’s Between the World and Me? | It is incredibly hard to get Jackson to say anything personal about his present self. After hearing him recall soaking up King’s then contemporary books as a young activist, I want to know what he thinks of Ta-Nehisi Coates. How does he feel that, in the US, this summer’s bestselling author on race hails not from the black Christian activist tradition, but from a place of secular atheism that is not especially optimistic? Has he read Coates’s Between the World and Me? |
| “No,” he answers simply, with impassive eyes, little to add, and no sign of curiosity. | “No,” he answers simply, with impassive eyes, little to add, and no sign of curiosity. |
| What about #BlackTwitter: what does he make of one of its most prolific users, activist DeRay McKesson? | What about #BlackTwitter: what does he make of one of its most prolific users, activist DeRay McKesson? |
| “Who?” he asks. The brother “in the blue vest”, I tell him, which triggers Jackson’s memory. | “Who?” he asks. The brother “in the blue vest”, I tell him, which triggers Jackson’s memory. |
| “I’ve met all those kids. They’re great,” he tells me – but again, he says nothing more. He registers none of the interest he has while talking about King, Johnson or Robert Kennedy. | “I’ve met all those kids. They’re great,” he tells me – but again, he says nothing more. He registers none of the interest he has while talking about King, Johnson or Robert Kennedy. |
| Neither does he display a willingness to talk about his son, when I try to discover how the incarceration of black men in America – a prime target of Black Lives Matter – has affected him personally. In 2013, Jesse Jackson Jr, a 10-term congressman from Illinois who resigned in 2012 during a federal inquiry, was sentenced to 30 months in prison for misappropriating campaign funds for personal use. He was released from prison in the spring and from a halfway house this summer. | Neither does he display a willingness to talk about his son, when I try to discover how the incarceration of black men in America – a prime target of Black Lives Matter – has affected him personally. In 2013, Jesse Jackson Jr, a 10-term congressman from Illinois who resigned in 2012 during a federal inquiry, was sentenced to 30 months in prison for misappropriating campaign funds for personal use. He was released from prison in the spring and from a halfway house this summer. |
| As a father, did watching his son go to prison affect his thinking about the American criminal justice system? He won’t talk about his son, or his feelings as a dad. He circles back to slavery, to Jim Crow, to his own experiences of being arrested in acts of political civil disobedience. When I press him later as we are walking in a hallway, he introduces me to a passing man who spent 30 years in prison before being found innocent all along. | As a father, did watching his son go to prison affect his thinking about the American criminal justice system? He won’t talk about his son, or his feelings as a dad. He circles back to slavery, to Jim Crow, to his own experiences of being arrested in acts of political civil disobedience. When I press him later as we are walking in a hallway, he introduces me to a passing man who spent 30 years in prison before being found innocent all along. |
| “This is what they do to us,” he says, before walking into a social hall where he is mobbed by kids. | “This is what they do to us,” he says, before walking into a social hall where he is mobbed by kids. |
| It’s a tack to respectability politics, a reminder of his overall message that the present struggle is just a continuation of what has gone before, that “the movement never stopped”. Despite the deaths he has protested about (most recently, Sandra Bland’s for “driving while black”) and the incarceration of nearly a million black Americans, Jackson is adamant that “we’re winning”, that victories on many fronts over time are making a positive difference. | It’s a tack to respectability politics, a reminder of his overall message that the present struggle is just a continuation of what has gone before, that “the movement never stopped”. Despite the deaths he has protested about (most recently, Sandra Bland’s for “driving while black”) and the incarceration of nearly a million black Americans, Jackson is adamant that “we’re winning”, that victories on many fronts over time are making a positive difference. |
| It is a hard message to buy the day after we speak, on the anniversary of Michael Brown’s killing, when yet another young black man is shot by Missouri police, and all hell breaks loose. | It is a hard message to buy the day after we speak, on the anniversary of Michael Brown’s killing, when yet another young black man is shot by Missouri police, and all hell breaks loose. |
| But Jackson’s mantra to “Keep Hope Alive!” is not so different from Obama’s “audacity of hope”‚ nor is his optimistic messaging so different from McKesson’s often tweeted mantra: “We will win.” | But Jackson’s mantra to “Keep Hope Alive!” is not so different from Obama’s “audacity of hope”‚ nor is his optimistic messaging so different from McKesson’s often tweeted mantra: “We will win.” |
| “Something in our household,” Jackson says about his childhood, with a sentiment that could be applied to those arrested on public property outside a Missouri courthouse, “always had our mind in the front of the bus, and always taught us to never adjust to degradation”‚ no matter how the police reacted. | “Something in our household,” Jackson says about his childhood, with a sentiment that could be applied to those arrested on public property outside a Missouri courthouse, “always had our mind in the front of the bus, and always taught us to never adjust to degradation”‚ no matter how the police reacted. |
| Even Jackson working with politicians doesn’t seem so different in light of news that Black Lives Matter protesters have begun to meet with Democratic presidential candidates about racial justice policy proposals. In fact, after McKesson, Johnetta Elzie, and other activists and journalists were arrested for assembly and journalism in St Louis on 10 August – it would seem the tactics, goals and messages of Black Lives Matter aren’t so disparate from those of a young Jackson, who was first arrested for trying to desegregate a public library more than a half century ago. | Even Jackson working with politicians doesn’t seem so different in light of news that Black Lives Matter protesters have begun to meet with Democratic presidential candidates about racial justice policy proposals. In fact, after McKesson, Johnetta Elzie, and other activists and journalists were arrested for assembly and journalism in St Louis on 10 August – it would seem the tactics, goals and messages of Black Lives Matter aren’t so disparate from those of a young Jackson, who was first arrested for trying to desegregate a public library more than a half century ago. |