The legendary civil rights leader recently passed away. Who remembers him and who doesn’t? I heard him speak in person and will never forget the experience. 

Like so many, I was saddened by the passing of Jesse Jackson a few days ago, and have been thinking about images from his prime, in the turbulent sixties through the conservative eighties, when he stood tall and handsome crowned by an Afro and gave better speeches than anyone of his generation. During the spring of 1979, in an expansive room in a Sacramento motel, I heard one of his finest.

I was working as a newspaper correspondent, usually covering high school sports, and the city editors, as far as I could determine, didn’t consider this summit on black concerns a big deal. They would have given the assignment to a unionized hack anyway, so I had the night off. I must have had two free nights. The news boys missed an all-star event. Sophisticated Maynard Jackson, the mayor of Atlanta, tapped into his late father’s Southern Baptist preaching to deliver a stemwinding speech. Syndicated columnist Carl Rove was also there and addressed the audience. Both speeches, and others, were in a smaller room than the tableclothed dining room where dinner would be served the next night before Jackson addressed vibrant and well-attired guests, most of whom were black.

Since I had no duties that evening, I came empty handed. Even without papers and pens I could’ve written from memory after the event but now confess I can’t recall many specifics of his speech. Specifics didn’t matter. How he said things did. I’d seen lovable Louis Armstrong and dashing Willie Mays live in the sixties and riveting Muhammad Ali fight Ken Norton in 1973 and, years later, would witness Bruce Springsteen and the Rolling Stones and Bill Clinton, and I imagine most of them would understand when I say Jesse Jackson at the podium in 1979 was the most exciting performer I’ve yet seen.

At age thirty-seven, he may have been the most charismatic guy on earth. At minimum, he resided in a small and elite group, and from that night to this I feel his electricity shooting through the room. I hear his powerful voice. I remember he phrased his thoughts in a more artful way than most public speakers. His style encompassed rhythm and rhyming and passion and timing and show biz bravura. Men cheered. Women swooned. I stood with my back to a wall, not having a dinner ticket, and thought, “Damn, this is fun. Hope he keeps speaking.”

Jesse Jackson did speak for a long time since he loved the spotlight, and I do remember a few things that were said. During a pause, a young lady asked, “How old are you?”

He told her.

And she said, “You’re getting old.”

He playfully denied her accusation.

“Oh yes you are,” she said.

The girl was making some of us uncomfortable and a lady at a nearby table declared to her companions, “That girl’s crazy.”

The aspiring comedian mercifully shut up.

Jesse Jackson got back on a roll and probably didn’t want to stop speaking but even he finally got tired and said, “My doctor told me I should start taking it easier.”

He may have lightened his oratory a little, but he certainly didn’t take it easy. He ran for president of the United States in 1984 and again in 1988 when he finished second in the Democratic primary to nominee Michael Dukakis, garnering seven million votes to the winner’s eleven million. His performance forced people to realize – and for those of a conservative bent, it must’ve been painful – that a black man could become the leader of the United States. In 2008 Barack Obama clarified matters.

After Jackson’s second presidential setback, he probably realized he’d never dwell in the White House, but I doubt he fretted long. He retained energy and ambition similar to those of the young man in the sixties who soared near the top of the civil rights movement, often being pictured next to Martin Luther King, who proved a talent scout as well as a leader, orator, and Nobel Peace Prize winner. Incidentally, compare the brilliant and dignified King to the current orange president who, since returning to office thirteen months ago, keeps demanding the ultimate peace prize despite attacking several countries, threatening others, and insulting allies.

In his zest for being at the center of all action, Jackson hurt himself in 1968 when Martin Luther King was assassinated and Jackson emotionally recounted how he’d held the dying leader’s head in his hands. A few others present said he hadn’t done so. I don’t think that much damages his legacy. Jackson was one of those next to King on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, and he was a big part of that time and place, marching for free speech and voting rights and fair housing and desegregation and dignity. And he continued those commitments throughout his career. Nevertheless, his image was marred during the 1984 campaign when a black reporter swore that Jackson had derisively referred to New York as “Hymie Town.” I’d never heard the phrase, despite being thirty-one at the time, so I believe the epithet, though inappropriate and hurtful, was not as malignant as many things one can say.

Jesse Jackson must have had a damn good time. For decades he crisscrossed the nation and circumnavigated the globe, and most places he was greeted as a distinguished visitor who had access to chiefs of state and almost anyone else. As the years passed, I somehow lost track of him. I knew he hadn’t disappeared, but, like an aging movie star, he no longer held center stage. If I’d recently asked myself how old Jackson was, I probably could’ve come close to the correct answer – eighty-four. I’m seventy-three myself but still can’t accept that people grow old and die. His mortal flesh has departed but for many in my generation he isn’t really gone, not with his civil rights legacy and six children (one out of wedlock) and long marriage and countless photos and videos from his career that can be viewed by clicking a computer key.

I needed to share some of those feelings this afternoon, so I drove to the once-blighted Oak Park neighborhood, where numerous businesses and newer homes have been built, to a bookstore and a restaurant owned by Kevin Johnson, a former pro basketball star and two-time mayor of Sacramento.

I first entered the bookstore and to a very young lady at the cash register said, “Hi, I’d like to talk to you about Jesse Jackson.”

She looked at me quizzically.

“I’m sure you heard he died this week.”

“I don’t know that much about him, but I recognize the name.”

“I bet a lot of customers have been talking about him.”

“No one has mentioned his name.”

I knew this was a bright and articulate lady and felt comfortable asking, “How old are you?”

She said, “Twenty-three.”

“Are you going to college?”

“I graduated two years ago.”

I smiled. “Wow, at age twenty-one. You’re making me jealous. I didn’t graduate until I was thirty-eight. I read a lot on my own but wish I’d partied less and gotten through quickly like you.”

She nodded. I decided to chat up her coworker, saying, “I guess you heard Jesse Jackson passed away.”

“Yes, but I hadn’t heard of him.”

“Oh,” I said. “How old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

“Okay, thanks.”

I decided to get some chow at Kevin Johnson’s soul food restaurant around the corner. Upon entering, I greeted the youthful hostess.
“I’m down here to talk to people about Jesse Jackson. I’m going to write an article.”

“I really don’t know too much about him, but I heard he died.”

She led me to a table. I studied the menu and told the young male waiter, “I better go light today, just the small plate of fried catfish and a side order of two biscuits. By the way, can I get that with a cup of gravy?”

He said, “Of course.”

When he returned with the food, I said, “I’m bummed out that Jesse Jackson passed away. Have you heard of him?”

“I’ve heard about him but don’t really know much about him.”

After devouring a heavier than anticipated load of fatty delights, I recklessly asked the waiter, “Do you have desert?”

He gave me the delectable options and I ordered peach cobbler. He said coming right up and I rebuked myself since sugar always makes me crash. When he brought out the large cup, perhaps it was a bowl, I thought maybe I should ask for a take-out container. I’d do that later. I tasted the delicious but too sweet cobbler and then gobbled it like a ravenous dog, grabbed my omnipresent cellphone from the tabletop, and googled “Jesse Jackson, young man” and thought, “I’m going to take this back to the bookstore so those two young ladies can see what I’m talking about.”

Only one of the two was behind the counter. Next to her stood the manager. I explained my mission to the boss and showed the eighteen-year-old a photo of Jackson in his thirties. “He’s a good looking guy, right. And a civil rights leader.”

She noncommittally said, “Yeah,” and excused herself to work in the back of the bookstore, probably with the other lass who may have been thankful to avoid this peculiar older fellow who yearned to discuss the departed dignitary.

“I guess young people aren’t into Jesse Jackson,” I said to the manager.

“He was very popular with baby boomers like you,” she said. “I’m Gen X, and I don’t even think of him as a leader.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, I’m not. Later on, Jesse had a very bad reputation. Martin Luther King, too. They were players.”

As she typed something into the computer, she said, “Dr. King was sleeping with a lot of white women. And right here it says Jesse fathered a baby girl when he was fifty-nine, and the woman, his assistant, was only thirty-nine.”

“That’s middle-aged, certainly old enough to have a relationship and a child.”

“There was a power imbalance,” she said.

Jesse, if you can hear me, I’ll summarize that this is a beautiful bookstore, all three women are attractive, and if you enter the place in your prime, I know they’ll dig your magic. That’s what we’ll miss the most.

George Thomas Clark on Amazon