A Son’s Reflection on Jesse Jackson Sr.’s Enduring Legacy

Written by Jesse Jackson Jr. (on Labor Day) to his father, Jesse Jackson, Sr. 

 

I’m with my dad this morning on Labor Day observing him with his advanced stage of Parkinson’s. Those of you who know anything about the disease you know that it is shared by every single member of the family that lives with a Parkinson’s patient.

 

There are times when he is audible and clear as all of us have known him to be. And there are times when the great Jesse Jackson is a shell of his former self. 

 

I want to express my love and pride for him. Most of you know the press conferences, the speeches, the unconquerable will to fight. But the genuineness and the warmth of the man himself has escaped public knowledge and the essence of the man.

 

There are so many different angles to my dad‘s life to which I would love to share and unpack for everyone. This morning on Labor Day I just want to comment on his courage and fearlessness. This courage and fearlessness is at the heart of American labor. Remember, and never forget , our system moved from a slave labor system, to a free labor system, that also had its racial problems and required it to be organized.

 

My father was born out of wedlock in the Jim Crow south. In addition to being called “a bastard” having been told that he would not amount to very much because he did not live with his daddy, and hearing the stories of his teenage mother being thrown out of the church, she told him along the journey as she covered her son in prayer along with his grandmother, my great grandmother Matilda Burns, they told him he was going to be somebody. Church folk can be mighty judgmental.

 

Dad knew and learned the power of suffering, the power of enduring, the power of resilience, the power to persist. 

 

For more than six decades, Jesse Jackson struck fear in the heart of the political order. If Jesse Jackson requested a meeting, fortune 500 companies hired consultants in preparation for the meeting. Politicians both Democrat and Republicans, called everyone that they knew to find out why Jesse Jackson wanted to meet with them. They even hired Black people and promoted them to their boards specifically in response to the idea that Jesse was coming. They needed an intermediary who ended up being a very well paid member of their corporate arrangements. They never gave dad credit for getting them their jobs, but that’s exactly what he did. He opened up opportunities, got them contracts, and paved the way for an entire generation of black middle class millionaires.

 

In many ways the word fear is also synonymous with respect for Jesse Jackson. He did not threaten people, but his very presence backed by the people who followed him, gave him a platform that not even the Internet could not provide. When Jesse Jackson showed up, doors opened, stocks rose or plummeted, markets changed behavior, governments adjusted, president and Prime Minister of countries wanted to meet, and the people listened.

 

Somewhere along this path in his early life his grandmother, and his mother, they told him that he was somebody, that he was God‘s child and it wasn’t just an affirmation, it was both affirmation and indoctrination. They believe it, he believed it , and in that belief he conquered fear.

 

On Labor Day I don’t know anyone that has worked harder for organized labor than Jesse Jackson. I don’t know anyone who stood on more picket lines, than Jesse Jackson, I don’t know anyone who has organized more workers more than Jesse Jackson.  

 

I don’t recall my father ever taking a vacation. When I was growing up, Dad would return home from the road on Friday evening, sometimes we would pick him up at the airport with Uncle Saint, WL Lillard, Vance Henry, Howard Pointer, so many members of the Black Men Pushing, so many men and women willing to be security for him, there are too many to name.  He would speak at push on Saturday mornings and after Saturday we would drop him back off at the airport until next Friday. There was no TSA at the time, we could walk our dad right to the gate with his armed traveling companions. When he traveled to local communities, even the locals provided the security to ensure that our father would return to us. 

 

Labor also had its own racial problems. Opening up the trades for black and brown people is full-time work especially for debt paid felons. White supremacy is deep in the trades. They think Black people and brown people are taking their jobs. Blacks in organized labor had to confront white organized labor more often than we can imagine.  Corporations would use blacks and browns to break picket lines and “labor” called us scabs. All we wanted to do was earn a decent living and feed our families. But the answer to scabism, was to “let us in the union” dad said. I just wish Bill Lucy were still here. There’s never been a modern leader like Jesse Jackson. Some hold office and then they retire. Some focus on their legacies. I don’t think my father spent a day of his life focusing on his legacy. I think he left the story for us to tell. 

 

Don’t ever forget The March on Washington was not called the “I have a dream March.” It was organized by A Philip Randolph, and it was the called the “March for Jobs and Justice.” Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the “I have a dream” speech on that occasion. And when he was killed on April 4, 1968, Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young, Rev. Billy Kyle’s, and my father were in Memphis Tennessee organizing sanitation workers who were not allowed to form a union, in a campaign called “I am a man.” I am somebody!

 

Here is a picture of dad praying with the late Ceaser Chavez, the champion of farm workers rights. Sound familiar? 

 

 

You see when my dad was born out of wedlock, the black community and the churches and white folks in the anti-union Jim Crow south, and the racially exclusive, until A Phillip Randolph began organizing the “Pullman Porter” North, called my dad and our people, illegitimate, bastards, and illegal. In the broken places, my father found strength. My Father and Cesar Chavez did not believe that a human being on earth was born without dignity and self-worth and no one was illegal.

 

Happy Labor Day Dad!