He was a hero of the struggle against apartheid, and is being eulogized here by the government and other orgs.
Being Zimbabwean, this news never really reached me, so my opinion steps up a notch.
Like all of us, Jesse Jackson was far from perfect and had many weaknesses. But he also had many strengths and his heart pushed in the right direction. I feel it’s our responsibility to remember his successes and learn from his failures.
Jackson was a towering, complicated figure. Inspiring, self-aggrandizing, and most often correct, one of those directly carrying forward MLK’s legacy.
I was a big fan in the late 80s and was a delegate for him at a senate-level convention in Texas, which was pretty entertaining. I think time passed him, though, and he was sidelined. RIP to a giant.
This is very reasonable, and I need to do a little self-education.
Very well-said. That’s been my take on him, as well.
Like Dinsdale, I’ve lived most of my life in the Chicago area, and my view of him is probably influenced by his ubiquitous presence in Chicago news media for decades.
This is also well-said. I acknowledge and respect all of the important work he did. He was also a self-promoter, and seemed to bring up the fact that he was there when MLK was assassinated an awful lot.
it is a big loss. many of the giant voices of the civil rights movement are passing. may his memory and message be eternal.
That kind of experience has to have a huge effect on a person.
Oh, no doubt at all.
But, IMO at least, Jackson continually name-dropped MLK, and continually reminded people that he was there that day, to buff his own bona fides.
I agree with all of this. His love of the camera was grating at times, but his good works earned him a solid place in history.
This was certainly not his shiniest moment. He claimed to have held MLK’s head when he died, which was an outright lie, and he was widely criticized for trying to assume King’s role almost immediately after his death.
Same, had no idea he had any special connection to Chicago.
I was afraid this was coming. I saw him on the news a few days ago, and he looked really ill.
It’s where he’d lived for most of his adult life, and he founded two Chicago-based civil rights / social justice organizations: Operation PUSH and the Rainbow Coalition (which he eventually merged), and which, AFAICT, he ran up until his death.
Because he lived here, he was very prominent in the media here, and was one of the people who was regularly interviewed by the local news broadcasts whenever there was a racial or social issue.
PJ O’Rourke, writing about the 1988 Democratic convention, in his book Parliament of Whores:
“I did, however, want to hear Jesse Jackson speak. He is the only living American politician with a mastery of classical rhetoric. Assonance, alliteration, litotes, pleonasm, parallelism, exclamation, climax and epigram—to listen to Jesse Jackson is to hear everything mankind has learned about public speaking since Demosthenes. Thus Jackson, the advocate for people who believe themselves to be excluded from Western culture, was the only 1988 presidential candidate to exhibit any of it”
An accomplished, significant but deeply flawed and relentlessly self-promoting man. I met him once, in late 1987, when I was working for the Mike Dukakis presidential campaign in Nashua, N.H. I attended the opening of the Jackson campaign’s field office in town and we spoke briefly.
May he rest in peace.
I admit I don’t know much about him. I was a very young child in the 80s.
I thought he led the NAACP but I haven’t seen mention of it in the news articles.
I had NO idea he was a staunch ally of LGBTQ people. That’s a big deal, especially in the Black community.
I guess I was missing out this whole time.
As far as I know, he was never involved in NAACP leadership.
After MLK’s death, Jackson increasingly sparred with Ralph Abernathy – King’s successor as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. By '71, Jackson and Abernathy were fighting for control of the SCLC, which led to Jackson leaving, to form his own group, Operation PUSH.
Trump claimed he worked with Jesse Jackson over the years. Is this true?
Trump attacks Obama, Democrats in statement on death of Rev. Jesse Jackson - mlive.com
Apparently, “kinda.”
It seems like Trump has regularly used the positive interactions he had with Jackson decades ago as evidence that “I’m not racist!”
A message he no longer wishes to express, I’m sure.