Jesse Jackson’s best remembered speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention ended with the refrain “keep hope alive”. It would be echoed in 2008 by the “hope” theme of Barack Obama’s successful 2008 presidential campaign.
“We are a better America today,” an emotional Jackson said the morning after watching Obama’s victory speech, an election which he in no small measure helped lay the ground for. And the US itself is a better, fairer place today for Jackson’s role and his moral leadership. The fight for racial equality is far from won, not least under a president who hopes to undo much of the progress made, but the US owes a debt of enormous gratitude to Jackson, who died yesterday after a long illness.
A powerful orator and civil rights leader, Jackson picked up the mantle from mentor Martin Luther King after witnessing his assassination in 1968. He became a focal point of black political power and a transforming figure in Democratic politics. King had tapped Jackson for a role in his Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organisation that spearheaded non-violent protests against segregation
He twice ran and failed to win the party’s presidential nomination. But his campaigning , notably through the National Rainbow Coalition which he founded, played a key role in raising issues of racial equality and poverty and pushing the party to the left.
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Jackson played a critical role in translating the voting rights gains of the 1960s into a political reality that made possible a black president far sooner than many would have expected.
“My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected and the despised,” he told the 1984 Democratic National Convention. “They are restless and seek relief.”
Sometimes controversial, sometimes abrasive, and with what some saw as a self-serving arrogance, Jackson nevertheless gave a powerful, badly needed voice to millions of the oppressed and disadvantaged in the richest country in the world.
