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AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show looking at the life and legacy of the towering civil rights icon, Reverend Jesse Jackson. He died earlier today at the age of 84.
In the 1960s, Jackson worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Jackson was with King when King was assassinated in Memphis on April 4th, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel.
Jackson later moved to Chicago, where he founded Operation PUSH — People United to Serve Humanity. He also founded the National Rainbow Coalition.
In 1984 and 1988, Jackson ran two groundbreaking presidential campaigns. In 1988, he received about 7 million votes as a presidential candidate. He pushed for cutting the Pentagon budget while increasing domestic spending on education, housing and healthcare. Jackson was also involved in international campaigns from the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa to supporting Palestinian self-determination.
The Reverend Jackson was hospitalized in November for treatment of a rare and particularly severe neurodegenerative condition, progressive supranuclear palsy, PSP. In a statement, Reverend Jackson’s family said, quote, “Our father was a servant leader — not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world. … His unwavering belief in justice, equality, and love uplifted millions, and we ask you to honor his memory by continuing the fight for the values he lived by,” they said.
This is a clip of Reverend Jesse Jackson speaking at the 1988 Democratic National Convention.
REV. JESSE JACKSON: When you see Jesse Jackson, when my name goes in nomination, your name goes in nomination. I was born in the slum, but the slum was not born in me. And it wasn’t born in you. And you can make it. Wherever you are tonight, you can make it. Hold your head high. Stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes, but the morning comes. Don’t you surrender! Suffering breeds character. Character breeds faith. In the end, faith will not disappoint. You must not surrender. You may or may not get there, but just know that you are qualified, and you hold on and hold out. We must never surrender. America will get better and better. Keep hope alive. Keep hope alive! Keep hope alive!
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Reverend Jesse Jackson speaking at the Democratic National Convention in 1988 when he ran for president for the second time.
Jesse Jackson was born in Greenville, South Carolina, October 8th, 1941. As a college student in North Carolina, Jackson became involved in the civil rights movement. By the mid-’60s, he was a close aide to Martin Luther King Jr. and became national director of Operation Breadbasket, a campaign run by the SCLC, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Over the past 30 years, the Reverend Jesse Jackson was a regular guest on Democracy Now! In 2011, I spoke with him shortly after the unveiling of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C.
REV. JESSE JACKSON: I think we would do well to use the statue as an occasion to deal with his unfinished business. He was shot down, assassinated at age 39. His last agenda items included a Poor People’s Campaign, the quest to end the war in Vietnam and stop the radical installation of capital in the hands of the very wealthy. And today, here we are with too few people with too much wealth, subsidized by the government, too many unnecessary wars and too many people in poverty. So, in substance, this memorial gives us a rallying point to keep going with his unfinished business. We bail out the banks, without link to lending and reinvestment, for example. The Bush tax cut extension is more money than all of the state budget deficits combined. So, clearly, Wall Street has made out big time, but the poor are expanding, and we’re losing jobs en masse, and we must, in fact, turn it around. …
He died a very unpopular man, attacked by our government, attacked by the media, shunned by many Bl