Name: Remembering Reverend Jesse Jackson
Uploaded: 2026-02-18T23:01:54.000Z
Duration: 7 min 56 s
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Past perfect

We all learned one of the last grand redwoods of the civil rights movement had fallen at 6 foot 3.

Jesse Jackson was one of the giants who helped change American society and American politics.

I was a young reporter sent to cover his speech at a black church in Norfolk, Virginia.

Many of the congregation were shouting and crying.

It was as if 300 years of hurt and fear and rage and hope were released into the rafters.

I will never forget that speech as much of America will never should never forget.

Our flag is red, white and blue, but our nation is rainbow red, yellow, brown, black and white.

It was the legendary singer Nina Simone who wrote eloquently in 1970 of all that a square jawed, Hollywood handsome Jesse Jackson represented to the masses to be young, gifted and black.

Jesse Louis Jackson was that and so much more.

Born in the segregated south to an unwed mother, a star quarterback at North Carolina A and T University, with grit and rare oratory skills revered at the time, he rose quickly in the hardscrabble and harrowing youthful days of the civil rights movement.

Beside him in historic highs is something that will go down and certainly be one of the inspiring moments of life in the lowest of historic lows.

But in the early 80s, an era when many thought a marriage between the pulpit and politics was impossible, he, like Eyre, rose to heights few with any of his ancestors or peers could even fathom.

All day tribute for the civil rights giant pouring in.

Oprah Winfrey writing in part, when I became a young reporter, he was my first interview with a national figure.

He inspired hope that will live on as he rests in peace.

From the Obamas who wrote, Michelle and I will always be grateful for Jesse's lifetime of service and the friendship our family share.

To actor Samuel L. Jackson posting Reverend Jesse Jackson, our profound leader and champion of justice.

May we all join together and keep Reverend Jackson's hope alive.

And Whoopi Goldberg honoring his legacy today on the View.

I can remember him sitting with little kids and saying, I am somebody.

That recognition meant the world to these children and to all of us, his children, remembering their father as a courageous, compassionate man.

He said, I'm not going to leave you a lot of money, but

what I will try to do is give you a rich life.

All of his life, Jackson preaching, exhorting, demanding justice in a quest to help his people and nation overcome.

We ain't the bottom, we're the foundation here.

He was shoulder to shoulder with Martin Luther King, Jr.

In 1965, witnessing the beatings of Bloody Sunday on television.

And just three years later, he was there on the fateful April evening when King was struck down by an assassin's bullet.

I tried to feel his head, and I asked him, I said, Dr. King, do you hear me?

Jackson eventually became one of the top lieutenants in the sclc, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which challenged the Jim Crow South's withering oppression.

After a leadership struggle with King's successor, Reverend Ralph Abernathy, Jackson split from the SCLC and formed a new organization, People United to Save Humanity or Push.

He had a vision of this political machinery that would be all inclusive.

He built not just within the Democratic Party, he also built coalitions globally.

We know that we are worthy of respect and protection, but nobody really knows our name, and

He broke boundaries in politics twice, running for president, first in 1984 under the banner of the Rainbow Coalition.

My father was a man of tremendous courage.

Indeed, he was the most threatened political presidential candidate in history up to that point in time.

We walked into those campaigns really wondering if he was going to be alive.

I was born in the slum, but the slum was not born in me.

In 1988, the Democratic Party's frontrunner for the presidential nomination before eventually losing the nomination to Michael Dukakis.

I'd rather go down in the stirring fight than drowse to death at the sheltered show up.

Jackson also took on the role of freelance international negotiator, meeting with some of the world's most brutal tyrants overseas.

The American black activist Jesse Jackson has become an intermediary in the Middle East.

In 1985, he joined Nightline for a debate with evangelical leader Jerry Falwell about apartheid.

South Africa is a government that, on the basis of race, suppresses the majority of its citizens on the basis of race for the purpose of economic exploitation.

At times, he was a spiritual advisor, counseling President Clinton in his darkest hour.

Facing impeachment over a sex scandal, Jackson had his own moments where he fell far short of what he had championed.

In the mid-1980s, facing controversy for allegedly making a highly offensive remark about the Jewish community.

Not only was he an ordained minister, he was a married man.

But in 2001, he admitted to fathering a child after an affair with a former staffer.

Though somewhat diminished, Jackson leaned into his faith of forgiveness and redemption and kept fighting.

He saw one of his hopes realized on election night in 2008 in Chicago's Grant Park.

I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.

At the time when Jesse Jackson ran, black presidential candidates were not considered viable.

They were often excluded from serious consideration.

And so that's the first way in which Barack Obama really walked in the trail that Jesse Jackson blazed.

Reverend Jackson wept as President elect Barack Obama delivered his victory speech.

In recent years, the effects of age and long illnesses slowed his gait, but not his spirit.

Jackson's family saying he passed away peacefully in his sleep.

He was this larger than life paternal figure.

And so I'm just humbled by how many lives that he's changed and people that he's impacted.

What I will miss the most is his poise, his fire, his passion, and

for that I'm just so grateful for his legacy that I pray will live on and on and on.