He was the cool one, the young one. He had a prodigious, glorious afro. He was the clenched fist in Martin Luther King’s clutch of sweet, spiritual churchmen. He had a great name: Jesse Jackson. He was the one I always wanted to meet—and when I did, finally, the results weren’t always pleasant. But Jesse Jackson, who is ailing now and being duly celebrated for his lifetime of advocacy, stands as a great American—flawed, of course—but utterly memorable.
I met him during his 1984 presidential campaign. I remember Wisconsin—actually, it was the night of that year’s Gridiron Dinner so all the Bigfeet had left for Washington. Jesse had a huge, mostly white crowd that night. He would win the Wisconsin primary. [Wrong: faulty memory, but he did well there.] And I remember having chills when he was introduced—in traditional fashion—as “the next President of the United States.” That wasn’t going to happen, but Jackson never met an audience he left unmoved. “I am…somebody!” His simple declaration. I remember him leading groups of black kids, repeating the mantra, “I am somebody!” until they believed it. I also remember his gorgeous phrase about the hard-working, bedpan-emptying, floor-scrubbing black proletariat, “They take the early bus.” They were somebody, too; they were the people too many of us took for granted and still do. They were the heart and guts of the black community; they kept their fury to themselves. They got on those buses, collected their meager paychecks, tried to keep their kids safe in a sea of temptation. They kept on keeping on.
There was another, more controversial side to Jackson. He was a classic shakedown artist. He went into corporate boardrooms and threatened boycotts and picket lines if their companies didn’t contribute to Operation Push and, later, the Rainbow Coalition. Not all of that money found its way to the right places. I criticized him for that, and rightly so—but also, maybe not: The corporations needed a bit of an Operation Shove. They are different, more inclusive institutions now, in part because of Jesse Jackson.
The most memorable confrontation I had with Rev. Jackson was over Sister Souljah. He had me on his television show the day after Bill Clinton had excoriated the rapper for her kill-the-cops lyric. Clinton had spoken at a Rainbow Coalition convention; Jackson was fuming, belatedly. I’d been there for the speech and I reminded Jackson that he had praised Clinton from the podium after he delivered it. We went back and forth over that. It was messy. According to close friends of his, he never forgot it. “He’d want to go off in some direction that wasn’t wise,” one told me a few month ago, “and we’d say, You don’t want to get into a Joe Klein situation.”
For black leaders, there’s always the temptation to go with anger. The casual racism they experience is infuriating. Karen Attiah, the Washington Post columnist, writes that she was stopped by police twice in twenty minutes, driving while black in Oklahoma recently. Les Payne, the late Newsday columnist, once said to me, “Joe, if you were black, you’d be out in the streets with a machine gun.” He may have been right. I witnessed too many instances where black friends were treated differently than I would have been—hailing a cab, assessing the local butcher shop on Fulton Street in our Brooklyn neighborhood. Enduring that on a daily basis, it can make you want to holler. And it’s easy to lose the big picture: the tremendous advances made by the black community over the past 60 years.
Jesse Jackson had a hand in those advances. A few years ago, Donna Brazile and some of her friends wrote a book called, “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics”—and it was striking: the thing they had in common was that almost all of them had put in time in Chicago, working for Jesse Jackson. He trained a generation of leaders who chose to work within the system. Those women became the glue, the strength of the Democratic Party in the 21st century. It is a significant part of Jackson’s legacy, but for me the most important part is his reminder that the vast majority of American blacks refute the barbaric, white racist stereotype. Whether they scrub floors in hospitals or serve on corporate boards, they took “the early bus” to make us a more perfect union.
Meanwhile, there’s Jason Aldean…
If Sister Souljah had the right to endorse cop-killing—I believe she did and Bill Clinton had the right to criticize her—then Jason Aldean has the right to celebrate small town “values” and I have the right to note that juxtaposing his lyrics with scenes of Black Lives Matter protests in a music video is a coy, wink-wink act of racism.
Ever since Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson went at it, a prevailing national debates has been which is more “American,” farms or factories, small towns or big cities. I stand with the cities, especially ethnically diverse communities like Queens, where I was born; but that’s just me. And so far as I can tell, cosmopolitan urbanists since H.L. Mencken might mock small-town America, but none would deny its place near the heart of the national mythology. For far too many right-wing populists, small town values are white values; Jason Aldean is playing at their racism. He would do well to take a close look at Luke Combs, whose cover of Tracey Chapman’s classic “Fast Car,” has been an explosive country music sensation:
The Grammy-nominated country star explained that he's been performing "Fast Car" at his concerts "for six-plus years, and everyone — I mean everyone — across all these stadiums relates to this song and sings along."
"That’s the gift of a supernatural song writer. The success of my cover is unreal and I think it’s so cool that Tracy is getting recognized and has reached new milestones," added Combs. "I love that she is out there feeling all the love and that she gave me a shout-out! Thank you, Tracy!”
And Chapman, for her part, brushed aside the silliness that Combs’ rendition was an act of cultural appropriation:
"I never expected to find myself on the country charts, but I’m honored to be there."
Praising the new version, she added, "I’m happy for Luke and his success and grateful that new fans have found and embraced 'Fast Car.'"
That’s the way we ought to be.
Sentence of the Week
I love Frank Bruni. He’s smart and funny and sane and wise. He has a “sentence of the week” competition on his newsletter. This week he won mine:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is where paranoia meets legacy admissions
Exactly.
If you’re not yet a member of the Sanity Tribe, push this button. It’s free, for now:
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Great post! Jesse Jackson seems to be a forgotten political figure these days.
I was the Hart State Director. I also worked in Savannah, GA and Jesse swamped us there.