Wow! The rumor that Jessie controls all internet content MUST ve true! He’s erased the OP! 
Missing OP alert.
In general, Snopes is one’s best source of information concerning possible urban legends, but searching for “Jesse Jackson”, I don’t find anything that looks like a racist UL told about him. There are a few there derogatory to JJ, but in a non-race-specific way, and there’s one version of the stranger in an elevator myth featuring him, where a character is presented as racist, but that character is mistaken.
Well, your post didn’t show up, but if you mean the story about his referring to Jews as “Heimies,” it’s true; I remember it coming up during his 1984 presidential campaign, and he admitted it and apologized (sort of).
If you’re referring to the story about his spitting in the food of white people as a waiter, such stories cite the November 21, 1969 Life magazine. I don’t know where to find that, but I’ve seen relatively lengthy quotes from relatively evenhanded people. Let’s call it “iffy.”
Yes, he really did say in the Life interview that when he was a young man working as a waiter, he used to spit in the white folks’ food.
I looked it up at the library and read it, for a thread last year sometime. BobT says he read it, too, in that thread…
…which I STILL can’t find in the Archives. I was looking for it, for this earlier thread, last June, and it wasn’t there. I’m beginning to think that it got lost in the December Meltdown last year. :mad:
I saved it, I sensed a hamster attack…PRETEND THIS IS THE OP!
Some people (usually on the right or racists) discredit Jesse Jackson by claiming he once boasted in an interview in the 1970’s that when he was young he worked as a cook, and spat in the food of white customers. Most of the alleged quotes are pretty lurid – I won’t repeat them here, but they are sickening enough to make my BS detector go off. Someone I am arguing with no uses that story essentially to discredit the entire Civil Rights movement…as if all the did was wage “spit ins”.
Besides, one could come up with much more recent material to discredit Jackson. Is this nasty story just some racist imagination running wild? I am afraid if I do the internet search I’d just get 1,000 versions of that story on ‘hate sites’. I want something reliable before I say anything about that.
Um, when I was a cook at Hardee’s, I spit in white peoples’ food, too.
I’m sorry, but in these enlightened times I just had to confess this. I wouldn’t do it today.
Wow. I get to refer a cite to DDG, instead of the other way around!
Here’s the thread you mentioned:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=119407
Yup, true story.
Awshit. THAT was the link DDG posted. I thought it was the one she referenced.
I’ll crawl back into my hole now. Ooops…
It could have only improved the taste of their burgers. 
And if you read Life magazine for the date, Jackson’s comments would still be in print too!
Didn’t they also identify Jackson as a Black Panther-which he was not? (Nor is he).
Okay, one more time, for posterity and the Fight Against Ignorance…(I was at the library anyway).
I located and xeroxed off the relevant part of the Life article, and here it is.
It’s titled “Black Hope, White Hope”, by John Perkannen. He is taking notes while Jesse speaks to the audience of 4,000 who are present for the weekly broadcast of Operation Breadbasket. There’s a gospel band, a choir, and then Jesse gives an opening prayer.
So he did say it.
And somehow I don’t feel like going back to look to see whether he was also referred to as a “Black Panther”. Maybe some other time…