Rev. Jesse Jackson: Civil Rights Activist and Politician

This week, we look back on our time with the iconic Reverend Jesse Jackson, who died in February 2026 at the age of 84, but will leave a lasting mark. We are a humane people. We fight for justice and fairness. When we met with the outspoken civil rights leader seven years earlier, he spoke candidly about his Parkinson's diagnosis. I could not get a pile of a chair because it was so intense. Plus, lasting memories of his poor upbringing. Answers for his many critics. That's a compliment. And the death of his colleague, Dr. King. Knocked him against the back of the hotel door. All that's coming up right here on In-Depth. So, obviously, we had the opportunity to spend time with you this morning during your workout class. Wanted to talk to you first about the Parkinson's. What made you first realize something might be off? Well, while walking, a couple of times I fell. The doctor said it sounds suspicious. And so they checked it out with a real specialist. There's some signs of Parkinson's and I could not believe it at first. Maybe, yeah, I really didn't give it the attention it deserved because unlike a cut or bruise, you can detect. Parkinson's kind of grows and diminishes you. And so unless you're just real on top of it, you can miss it. I got this out earlier, and I talked with my son, Jesse Jr. He said, Dad, take it public. Use the platform to inspire and educate others. That's what I've done since I've come public with the Parkinson's. We've talked with the Fox Foundation in New York, in California. We met with a number of people on airplanes and in corridors who identify with, you know, it's nothing to be ashamed of, but it's tough to deal with. That first year when you said you weren't really giving it the attention it deserved, what does that mean? Well, I could not feel its immediate impact. So I was not on the kind of medical regimen I'm on now. I take medicine four times a day, a kind of dopamine. It's not cured, but it can alter it. Plus, you have physical therapy. and occupational therapy and speech therapy. And all those therapies matter. Once I got into the Shirley Ryan Clinic and began to study it more, I began to become more sensitive to it. You can be walking up steps and fall up steps because if you don't pick your steps up with an accentuated lift, you can fall. And so one of the dangers of it is that people just simply fall. or you begin to lose mobility. And so they tell you to do big stretches, exaggerate your movements, and walk. And then, of course, what I'm doing now, in addition to that kind of exercise, is the muscle development and fitness. What do the therapies entail that we didn't see this morning? Well, if you were dealing over at the Shirley Ryan Center, you'd see more big movements. but I'm trying not to cross medicines, treatments, so to speak. I'm very aware that the big movements matter, whether you are walking or talking or sitting or standing. The enemy to your progress is the rest, sleep, and then slump. So you slump. Is it? You slump because when your back muscles are weak, it's almost like you're kind of going back toward the ground. What the muscular development does is that it gives you the strength to sit, stand, and walk upright. For a long time, when my shoulder was hurt, I could not get a pile of a chair because it was so intense. And then I couldn't comb my hair left or right hand and couldn't shave. So you find yourself deteriorating real fast. So when I put all that together, I said, look here, we've got to go to work. In what ways have you felt it progressing since you first found out you had Parkinson's? It was so difficult to shave and difficult to get my hand, you know, and you hold people and taking pictures, your arm drops. If you're not kept, I can mistake. It'd be inappropriate. You just can't get your arms higher. It just has all kind of social and physical implications, But it is a disorder that can be dealt with if one follows a medical regimen and takes physical therapy and occupational therapy and speech therapy according to your needs. What do you think you learned from your biological dad having had it? I was with him one day. We were out talking. And he had a penis on his lip. And my son said, Grandpa, he didn't feel it. I've had the same experience, because there's a danger not feeling extremities and stuff like that. So it requires a reorientation to oneself, learning how to walk again, how to stretch again, how to talk again, how to exaggerate steps and movements and not give in to this thing. biological dad who was also a really successful boxer back in the day what do you know about his boxing career KO uh Robinson right yeah he lost i think one fight i never saw him fight he was so tall and muscular clearly he was a fighter he had quite a reputation as a fighter you know athletics have meant so much to oppress people across the years In our case, biblically, the role of David and Goliath, the role of Samson and the Philistines, the huge stories of these guys became national leaders that have been blessed by God with these gifts and this charisma. Well, in our darkest hour, between 1880 and 1950, 5,000 blacks were lynched without one conviction. fellow gimme of a sword without one stopping of it. Jack Johnson beat Tom Jeffress, became the hero of the black world. Then race riots when he won fights. He didn't make it any better. He was a very flashy kind of guy. Guerrilla McCall, headweight champion, married a white woman, whole nine yards. At some point in time, he took a young lady across state lines, and they said he had broken the law. He married her. But yet he is not yet. He was just pardoned by Trump last year. But the role of the heavy, and so Ali's hero was not so much Joe Louis, but Jack Johnson. Because his fears he fought his way into were not biologically inferior. We can think. We can endure. And then of course, Joe Louis and Max Mellon. Long before we had the right to vote on public accommodations, and Hitler rolled out his champion, in the real sense, Max Mellon. It's propaganda too. No one can beat my guy. No white American could beat the guy. Had to reach back to the bowels together and bring out the brown bomber, Joe Louis. Lewis. Second fight he demolished him in a minute and third or second of the first round or something. Bigger than life hero, Joe Lewis. I remember when I preached his funeral and I had gotten to know him, I went and the night he was in the castle and rubbed his fist, I just cried and cried because on his fist rolled. The feelings of some men I remember he would fight and we would be outdoors on a blanket with a smoke and kissing with mosquitoes eating and listening. Joel Oster from Madison Square, I got in New York City. Joel Oster, Chicago, Illinois. It was a big deal. Then of course, Jackie Robertson. He endured the hardships of it. He became victorious. He didn't fail. He was rookie of the year, and batted three, four, to seven. Jackie was a stand-up guy. Before Rosenpark sat down at 55, he sat down at 41. He went to the back of a military bus on the base. He defied the bus laws even in 1941, there about. His breaking has a lot to do with deracializing America. I think what made it the most difficult for him, he was a guy at the bat with his teammates hoping he wouldn't get a hit, needing them to get a hit. He was a guy, somebody throws it at him, never was out the dugout to defend him. Against those odds, he prevailed. Later on, he and Don Newcomb and Campanella had been so successful, Larry Dober and Hank Aaron and Willie Mays. Kurt Floyd was in that lens of great baseball player, Kurt Floyd. And they wanted to sell him. And Kurt Floyd used the 13th Amendment and said, you can't sell me. I'm not a slave. And he lost his baseball position, but he won the suit. So every athlete in the world today has free agency, whether you're in England or Australia or Britain or Africa or America. Free agency because of Chris Blood. And then, well, you can't play basketball until you finish college. That is 21 years old. Spencer Edwards had the ability as a sophomore. He filed a lawsuit. He won. The fact that Kobe Bryant can leave high school and play with the pros now. You can do what they call one and done with the big schools, basketball. All that is Kobe Bryant. And then there's the role that these athletes have played to make life better. You mentioned Jackie Robinson. How about the best time you ever had with him? Well, maybe when my dad, who was himself a AAA baseball player, Charles Jackson, I was a bad boy for Jackie Robinson and for Donald Newcomb. That was a big thrill. You know what I mean? To touch him, you know, look at him. The other part of it was that Jackie had this awesome sense of dignity. And he saw himself as a pacemaker and the pace setter for America. Muhammad Ali actually once lived not too far from your offices here in Chicago. Right around the corner. How did you get to know him? One, he was known in his realm as a box. I remember the civil rights, we had the kind of mutual admiration, we met each other on the South Side at some point in time, we began to connect. I remember the day Dr. King gave the Riverside speech of the White House against the Vietnam War, and Ali of course had taken the anti-war position, and he was enamored, he was carried away with Dr. King. Jim Brown and Ali came by Dr. King's room. Dr. King and Dr. Abanathan, Andy Young and I were sitting there and he came in for a while. Chance Escher, Dr. King's lawyer, was Ali's lawyer. And so we met in that setting and we just kept on meeting and working together. When he was in exile, we spent a lot of time together. And I fought with Dr. Turner Leroy Johnson to get him back in the ring. So we did a lot of stuff together. Your favorite memory with Ali would be what? At my home, at my grandmother's table, eating crackling cornbread, which is, for those who don't know, crackling cornbread is nothing but pork cut up. It was so good, he ate a pan of it. In the second, he said, what is this stuff? I can't eat pork. Mr. Muhammad knew I was eating this. He didn't stop eating it though. You know, but his sense of, I mean, the guy was, he lost three years of his, the heart of his career, someone like Michael Jordan did really. He came back to be the world champion. So he became a, it was because of his style and his flair, his boxing ability, his dancing in the ring, his talk, his principal position. He gave up money. It was not an idle approach. He gave up. He was literally broke. I think Joe Frazier loaned him some money to get him back into the ring and offer him a fight so they both think he can make some money. So Ali really did not do a short circuit to glory beyond the ring. You mentioned style. You were quite the athlete yourself in high school and college. You made the varsity team in football your freshman year of high school. You were also quite the baseball player as well. How good of a pitcher were you? Well, the older I get, the better I was. At least you admit it. There you go. Yeah, well, I could play. My father, Charles Jackson, was a great baseball player. And these days, he would have made the pros, the majors. He was a triple-A baseball player. And when people like Jackie Robinson or Don Newcomer, Junior Gilliam would come south, he would be a part of the all-star team to travel. So I got a chance to see him and some of the best guys play. And as I grew, I could throw with accuracy. But I had a sense that I enjoyed baseball the most. that I could play four years of football and finish college. I don't want to risk going into a minor league situation where you may or may not make it. But you could have if you wanted. You were that good. I could have, but it was too great a risk. I thought the gamble should be reduced and the option of playing football in college was fascinated me the most. How talented a quarterback were you? Best I'd ever seen. Well, I was well coached, you know, and we had good teams. I enjoyed sports. It were not bad. I could not have gone to college. No? My parents couldn't afford to send me to college. I never remember them being out of debt. And so football gave me a chance to go to school, and I'm ever grateful. Athletics, I'm all so concerned about how the athletes have been exploited in such a different kind of way. You can go from picking cotton balls to picking footballs. Picking cotton wasn't so bad. If you could own the cotton sack and the cotton patch, and you could wear your cotton and build it and sell it and turn it into textiles vertically. If you could only stay at the bottom, picking cotton is a bad deal. Athletics, if we could only play football, basketball, baseball, fill up the stadium. Many schools have 25 to 30 athletic programs, tennis and badminton and track and all sports that do not generate capital. Great sports, but the football team and basketball team generates money for the whole athletic department. And often those sports are heavily played by African Americans Not to get the financial consideration that they deserve I wanted to actually take you back to when you were growing up So your grandma, she had your mom when she was 13. How old was your mom when she had you? And why did that upset your grandma so bad? Well, 17 because she had the aspirations for her mother to go to college. mother was quite the singer and had scholarships for music to go to school and got pregnant and chose to have a baby. The upsets her dreams but they were forever close and it didn't break the bond it just interrupted the rhythm of their projected dreams and parents often you don't have to have a degree to aspire that your children have a degree. Grandma worked for the Waldrips and they would throw away the various magazines, science fiction and magazines, National Geographic. Grandma couldn't read them but she knew if their children read them, I I should read them. Take them and bring them home. I was reading National Geographic when I was 10 years old. Of course, my grandmother had a sense, a feel for education. When her first child was born, she had a 25 cents a week metropolitan insurance policy for the college. I later found out what the policy was. Pay 25 cents a week. A small amount of money, but a huge treasure of thought. I think your mom, when she was 16 years old, before she had you, she actually had five college music scholarship offers. She was a soloist at church. Why was it, though, after she had you, she was almost exiled from the church? Well, because of the moral standards of our church community. They frowned upon babies being born out of wedlock. And when mother became pregnant, it was so prominent and so well known, it became an issue. So finally she had to leave the choir, bring me down front, all to apologize for my birth. She was accepted and received again back at her special place in church, for which she never left. but that was the moral standards of that day. A lot of times girls would get pregnant and they would go north to have the baby up north away from home so as not to embarrass the family. That didn't just happen in black-white relations. That happened in black-black relations too. Money was tight. How true is it that you'd have to wait for your grandma to come home before you could have Thanksgiving dinner? Well, what it was is that for most of us in our neighborhood, our parents were maids and cooks and tended to babies of the white folks on the other side of town. And on Thanksgiving, down at the bottom of the hill, we would play football, usually without a football. Sometimes we won't overrack at the football. And around four o'clock, our parents would get off the Alta Vista bus coming up the hill. They would get overcooked food, food cooked, more food cooked than would be used. They would bring it home, we'd meet them at the bottom of the hill and bring it up to the house. Also, we couldn't buy a turkey, didn't have the money. But our store was too small to cook a turkey in in the first place. We ate turkey. It was the overflow of White Folk's Kitchen. I think you guys had a $9 budget when you would go to the grocery store to buy groceries, what would happen sometimes when you'd get to the front register? Oh, my father, every week he'd come home, we would go to buy groceries. Maybe his limit would be $9, $8.50 or something. And I could count better than he could count and I was in fifth grade. And I would be trying, if I had miscalculated, we were like $9.60 rather than $8.80. Even though we shopped at the grocery store all the time, It was not like bring the money back and get it next week. We had to run that line and take the product out and put it back on the shelf. It was humiliating and I never wanted to be in that position. I understand the first house you lived in with your mom and grandma, you guys had wallpaper up, more to protect from the wind coming into the house. Dad had to put a ceiling, they call it, around the doors, so I had to cut the wind. and wallpaper, not so much for decoration, but to break the wind. We didn't develop a complex about it, Graham, because we were conditioned in that way. But something within me said, we could change our condition. Really? And that we shouldn't live this way. So you were conscious of it at the time that that wasn't the standard you wanted? We would go to the white people's house and look at what they had. We just didn't have it. Why the majority of your time growing up did you live mainly with your grandma as opposed to your mom or dad? It really wasn't that far apart. That's exaggerated sometimes because mom and grandma always stayed either in the same house or next door to each other. But of course, I had the grandma affection. Grandma spoiled me. Did you? Oh, yeah. What would she do? Wouldn't let my mother spank me. People even talked to me loudly. Oh, what a wonderful woman. What a cook. And she was the neighborhood's grandmother. She was such a special person. God damn. I read this story somewhere, and your biological dad got a new house, and you would on occasion, like, enviously stand outside on the street and look in. look in. He moved to very nice, he was very entrepreneurial, very industrial, so a very nice house on the other side of town. White House, big picture window and central air and heating. A stream ran into his yard with God and the flowers and stuff like that. I would just go and look. I was hesitant to approach him. Particularly my stepmama would say I'd internalize anxiety about that. Why wouldn't you approach? The children are sensitive to being affirmed or rejected. I'm not getting in trouble. It's a very complicated situation. He loved me. He protected me. My stepmama grew to love me. It didn't start out that way. I remember when she was dying and I preached, eulogized my father when he died. And she was asking me to eulogize her and she said, you know, you're our oldest son. Take care of your brothers, which was my father and her, three other boys. So in the end it worked out very well. I was, I learned to love them and to be accepted by them. Your half-brother Noah had said, at times, though, you felt rejected. How so? Your blood cries out to you. But it did not have deep indentations because I was so loved by my mother and my stepfather. My stepfather adopted me legally when I was 12. I was Jesse Burris, my grandmother's name. I became Jesse Jackson. That's my third name. I'm adopted. So I never was fatherless. I never was homeless to that extent. Many of the children had worse conditions, frankly, and they were less loved. What about taunts you got from fellow students? You know, I think one story read, they would say, make fun of you for not having a daddy. Well, children play rough. I mean, a child is a contact sport. So you were a student at the Chicago Theological Seminary School. And what I thought was kind of funny about this is obviously you've had this wildly successful career. But in college, you actually were struggling in seminary school. How true is that? I was struggling because my attention span was challenged by the movement. I left Greensboro. I had been jailed twice. I had been marching and I was into social activism. I was inclined to go to law school, law seminary, and Dr. Sam Proctor convinced me to go to seminary to try it for a year. And I was torn because I'm in Chicago in seminary and my boys are downtown marching in Selma, Alabama. Matter of fact, the Sunday that the march took place in Selma, I was in school. I just came to the library and I looked on television and saw the beating. I couldn't take it anymore. And I said to my classmates, if Jesus is real, we've got to go to Alabama. The cross is not just something to wear, something to bear. And I challenged their sense of theological commitment. And three constables drove from Chicago to Salem, Alabama. That's what I really meant, Dr. King, for the first time, in an engaging sense. I was hired shortly thereafter. I worked with him from 65 to 68. I want to back up momentarily, if I could, to two other key moments that predated that that I think helped in shaping your view on things, one of which was you're six years old and go into a local store and see Jack. Take the story from there. Oh, kind of like urban ghettos where the Stornos, other ethnic groups, were occupied. And at that time, the social standards were such that they had freedoms we didn't have though we lived there. And we thought he would laugh and play with us. A white guy playing with us was a big deal. He would smack the little girls in the butt and giggle at him, kind of silly in retrospect. Call him by first name. One day I ran in the store and there were 70 adults, still a little bigger than where we are now. And I ran against a Mary Jane candidate. I said, Jack, he stopped. Pistol of the military ever pistol at me again. Two things hit me so quickly. One was that... And he had a pistol. Yes, yes he did. The adults in the store who saw it didn't see it. They refused to see it. What do you mean? I mean, they saw it, and since they were saying, I should have known better. So I'm like, and when they tell, quote unquote, first of the white lady, they said, should have known better. Even though the lady said he didn't do it, but should have known better. So their dismissal of it was that. There was no protest, no demonstration, no burning the store down. The other part of it was that I knew if I told my father to just come back from Germany, he was very upset because that generation fought for rights in Europe. They didn't have it at home. And they came back home, didn't have the right to vote. And he wasn't even going to the war because his other brother was there. He refused to, he was shining shoes at a certain store. And when he stopped, the barber shop, the barber had him sent to the army. Every white man was, in some sense, a deputy sheriff. So he had a certain anger. I don't know if I told him he was going to come down, he was going to either shoot or get shot. So something was in me in that flash moment, don't tell your daddy. And I took it. and went to the truck a long time forever. I just internalized it. That can happen. Those decisions can happen in such a flash. Greenville Public Library, you go there to try and get a book that you need for a college term paper. Well, 25 books. I was home from the University of Illinois for Christmas. And there was a speech with 25 voluntary bibliographers. And they had to read the books in some measure and write the speech and memorize and give it to a speech contest upon returning to school. So I came out excited to do my work. I ran to the colored library. I don't have this number of books, but my friend at the Central Library does. So I'll give a call, write a note. I ran maybe two miles. I got to the library. I was puffing in. She said with two policemen, as if they just happened to stop by. I missed the point at first. And I said, she said, I knew you were coming. I have for you in seven days. I said, seven days? This is my first Christmas vacation. I really need the books now. She said, I said, may I go down in the stacks? She said, you remember? She said, I got the message. I went up back and I cried. I came back that summer, seven classmates of mine, Reverend James Hall, Springfield Baptist Church. We went to the library and we were arrested. I can't take as much credit as I wanted to take because he had trained us. If they talk back to you, if they talk to you loud, don't say anything. They curse you, don't push you, don't push back. Nonviolent discipline training. For cigarettes on your neck, take it, don't fight back. We were prepared. We had been through all the processes. So we went to the library and got into the library and our lawyers were there. The police met us and said, we don't leave this place by the count of three, you're going to jail. We looked at each other, you're going to jail. I said, one, two, we turned and went back. I said, why are you guys back to church so quick? They're going to lock it. He said, I sent you to go to jail. So we went back and we were arrested. It was a challenge for us to break that zone of fear. I went to jail the first time. I lost my fear of jails and death. How did it feel when you did it? It felt great. There was a certain dignity and a sense of fight back. You fought somebody your size. The other side was my father, who had really taught me with his own sense of personal politics how not to be violated. He was home Saturday afternoon watching television with his feet in the wash tub with the Epsom sauce. and I went to the fridge where I was getting some ice cream out. I heard his feet pop, pop. I could tell that walk. How you doing, son? I said, all right, Dad. He said, you ever missed a meal at home? I said, no, Dad. Yeah, I told him about you and them children. About you down to town hungry or something. It was not about hungry. It was not about the sit-in at the library, at the restaurant. It was about the library. If you're going to do that, you have to leave here, go back up. Yeah, I'll know where to do that kind of stuff, back up to school. I learned my sense. But he was afraid for me. My politics came out. One sudden afternoon after church, he had a job, a bank, a lawyer's office, and a judge's chambers. And teaching my brother how to empty the cans and how the buff and mop and all that stuff And that Sunday afternoon his boss came by Hey Charlie come here with two of his big friends And Daddy kept buffing. He said in a very unkind way, come here. Daddy kept buffing. Come here Charlie. Daddy kept buffing. I'm gonna kick you. Daddy stopped the buffing machine. I heard all of that. Took his belt up with all those keys on the belt. Walked up there and said, Mr. Templeton, you, two of your big friends, I cannot stop you from kicking me. You can't take the leg back with what you do to kicking either. I'd rather get in trouble. We were leaving. My brother and I, we grabbed dad and said we left, went home. Later on, that same man, who was a fairly decent guy on a sober day, recommended my father to adopt a post office as a custodian. But he was one of his favorites. Well, that sense of standing up, he knew my mother was sick and didn't have a job that Christmas. He knew dad was his only job. So he had no job. And yet he's still a principal. That's inspired me every time I think about it. And it led my most happy Christmas. We were supposed to go to the church to exchange gifts and fruits. And Dad said to Mama, we're not going because we don't have anything to share. Mama said, we're going. You just don't want to go to church. We're going. If we just go there and sing, Reverend Sam will appreciate our presence. And since I have given out of thee, that type It's a type spirit. We went there and Reverend Sample gave us some fruit and some necktie, bow tie or something. And we were happy. Gave us something. And we came back home walking. We got to our house up the 11 steps. Six bags of groceries in front of our door. We thought somebody made a mistake because we had not ordered anything, couldn't afford anything. and we asked Mr. Scott next door, did you order these groceries? He said, no, somebody left them for you. No, they couldn't have because we didn't order them. We didn't have any money. And so Dad said, put them in the house, and we'll keep the meat in the fridge there until someone calls for them, and the fruit and cookies say, don't you or your brother touch them. We didn't. We were afraid to. Mr. Day Roberts, a man that my mother had worked with to get his veteran papers signed and his money to come in. And her dad was sick and dad had no job, mom was sick. Helen, you got these boys, they want to help you put groceries up. She said, it's not their fault. I told them don't touch it. He said, why don't they help you? She said, whoever left a note didn't leave me in the writing. writing. He said, you know I couldn't write. You did the writing for me. He'd come back with the food as a way of saying thank you. God at the beginning of my life and that kind of reinforced my sense of religion and the goodness of God. It means a lot to you, that story, even to this day. Even today. So fast forward to your in college seminary school, March 7th, 1965. You know, you see what's going on Bloody Sunday, March through Selma. You're driving down the next day. And despite eventually missing your second child's birth, you get your first real meeting with Martin Luther King Jr. What's discussed and why are you pitching him on bringing the movement to Chicago? He came to Chicago, not in my insistence. It was a big debate. Should you bring the movement north? Should you stay south? And they finally decided to come to Chicago. We began to organize ministers. And in organizing those ministers, we gave him a base when he got here, a base for housing marches. He came in fighting for public education, came in fighting against the red infirm houses on the west side, in the march for open housing. He was searching for a way to arouse the consciousness of people. And the open housing marches became the final act of his life, really, which really was there was not one Vietnam it was a defensive movement who hit the firehousing act came out of those demonstrations. I think it was five days before his assassination you end up getting into a heated argument of sorts and fellow activist Andy Young says you still remember that that the last substantive conversation the two of you had was some sort of argument. It was not the last substantive conversation we were But often he encouraged vigorous debate and sad meetings. We were not docile just waiting to go. He said we're going to Washington. We said, well, what is the, if they reject us, what would be the, what's the breaking point? We knew in Birmingham if they ignored us, the more we filled up jail, the more we marched, that was the hook. If you go to Washington, Johnson does not like us, does not like you. What's the hook? JOHNSON BARRON, Johnson being the president? LBJ, huh? There's no hook. Well, what do we do? It was along those lines. And the context of it was, he had said in the meeting open, I have had a migraine headache for three days. And I don't know if I can go any further. I'm being turned on. He was being attacked by leaders. He was maybe 62 percent in the black and 62 percent in the negative among blacks when he was killed. 52 percent by black and 72 percent by whites in the negative. Blacks were attacking him, taking attention away from civil rights from the war. His point was money for healing and harm is going to killing abroad. You can't separate. It's the same budget, war or peace. And he said, maybe I should just quit, give up, stop. And he said, Dr. King, don't talk that way. It was such a solemn thing. And be quiet. Don't say stop. Peace, peace, whenever there's no peace. I can see he read that in Jeremiah. He then said, maybe if I would fast to the point of death. One of my friends, Ralph Stokely, Flo McKissick, Jim Farmer, or we disagree on some tactical, but we're friends. Come to my bedside. We follow him. They say, well, maybe we turn the minus and two plus and go on to Memphis and on to Washington to have sit-ins to end the war in Vietnam. He left, went back home. We went to several places and we were together in Memphis that Tuesday. When Dr. King was assassinated, what do you remember seeing and what do you remember happening? I remember the day before how excited we were about the prospects of leaving that going on to Washington. I brought a band down from Chicago. He had heard them play in Chicago two weeks before and being brass played Precious Lord at the seminary where we were having our Saturday morning meetings. and we were going to the Reverend Billy Kyle's home for dinner. We came across the courtyard about 6 o'clock. We should have left at 5. He said, Jesse, you're always late. I said, Dr. King, you're late. You know you're an hour late. You're habitually late. No. And we were going to Reverend Kyle's home. You don't even have on a shirt and tie, I said, Dr. King. Prerequisites for eating his appetite, not a shirt, not a tie. He laughed. He said, Ben said, be sure to play the game. I'll be sure to play my favorite song, Press the Lord tonight, Ben said, I will. Pow! I would have hit him and severed his tie. That's all I saw was blood just everywhere. Knocked him against the back of the hotel door. I remember somebody saying, get low, get low, because whoever it was, if they had sprayed bullets, they could have hit three or four of us in the courtyard. There's a picture of Andy Young and somebody. We pointed that picture is saying the police are coming to drone guns. The guns, the shot in the company came that way. Go the way the shot came from. That's what that picture was all about. I hate to replay that moment. He died so young, so innocent, such moral authority. It hurts to think about it, talk about it. What do you remember thinking at the time as all of this is going on? One thing about I remember Dr. Abnath is saying, back up, that's my friend, my friend, he realized he'd been shot. I backed away and went and called Mrs. King. I had the phone by his bedside, I called Mrs. King. She had a kiss in her book, the first call she got was from me because I never called her. I called home to my own wife and children at the same time. I remember we were saying that we could not let one bullet kill a movement. We were going on to Washington, and we did. Most of us are not spending time in Memphis at the trial. We spend our time in Washington fighting, in the war and fighting for poverty to be ended. What did you say on the phone to Mrs. King? Mrs. King, how did Jess and how things go on? I said, well, Mrs. King, it was hard to get it out. Dr. King has been shot, I think, in the shoulder. I couldn't see it in the neck. I mean, I was not the coroner. I said, I think you should try to get up as quickly as you can, though. She had a child come. She was in bed reading. And I'm sure within eight or 10 minutes, she got a call from one of the white services and he hadn't been killed. And that drama took us in many ways to where we are today. Why was it important to you in the days that followed that, or the next day to wear the blood-stained sweater? My anger. Anger? My anger. I was upset. Blood's not going to stop us. We're going to fight back. It was a badge of honor. James Earl Ray, who was convicted of killing Dr. King, why have you said before you believe he didn't act alone? He didn't have the money, the motive or the organization skills to do it. A lone killer getting out of town at 6 o'clock, getting into Mississippi and all that, ended up in London. He couldn't have done that by himself. When he was killed, the FBI's in Atlanta office, they jumped on the table to report and they exclaimed, joy. environment we focused on at that time. A group of two or three was with the C. James Rory one time in Brushy Creek Mountain Creek or something like that and I was convinced he pulled the trigger. He didn't have the capacity to pull this off by himself. You realized that after you visited with him? Before I was lost and visited him and Marty King III visited him on different occasions, from the exact from him, something different than Raoul, some story he had made up. Yeah, I guess he had made up. What do you think happened? The government was very involved. You think so? Who would say that if there was a national emergency and they had to lock up 100 people, the other team would be one of them? The argument that came was a communist, a threat to the country. It was not the truth. The Christian minister. And the FBI tapped his phones. RFK allowed who would tap his house phone, call phone, and tap phones in the hotels we stayed in. So all of us were tapped out by the FBI. That's the role they played. And part of it was because when Swenna Goodman Chained and two Jews and black had been killed in Philadelphia, Mississippi, Dr. King said they were not trying as hard as they could to find the killers. Hoover called them a damn liar. Dr. King didn't call them a damn liar back. He just knew that the FBI was not doing its best, and the FBI were creatures of the culture. To what extent do you think J. Edgar Hoover played a role in? I have no idea. That gets in too much detail, man, except I know this guy couldn't do it by himself. There was a very public hatred for Dr. King expressed by the FBI and the government. What do you think of Hoover? Well, he had the concentrated power to intimidate officials. I mean, every senator in Washington was afraid of him. Every president said he had this concentrated power. He was a different kind of animal. What did you know about just you yourself being under surveillance at the time? Dr. King told us there's no defense against ambush and sabotage. So don't fret over what they may do, do what you want to do. In some sense it was a badge of honor. We had nothing to hide really. We said we're going to have a meeting tomorrow night at 7 o'clock at the church and we're going to demonstrate. All they heard was what we were going to say at night to church anyhow. It didn't matter that much to us. I think also it was a kind of badge of honor. I remember one time there was a group in Chicago called the Red Squad. They were surveilling us, surveying, and they were telephones and all that. And finally, a suit was filed, and then the lawsuit came out, made public. And there are some names on it. Some of the local resident militants' names were not on the list. They were upset. They felt violated because they didn't make the list threatening anybody. So we just had to live with threats. And I know you've received your fair share of death threats over the years. How concerned have you been at various points for your own life? Not so much, but for my family. How so? I wanted my children, knowing that all the king's children had to come up with fathers to have some values, some properties that would take them beyond what may happen to me or their mother. My wife was quite an activist herself. She went to Cuba first. She went to the Middle East first. So she's an activist. Said to the one, I want you to have good minds. Strong minds break strong chains. I want you to have a sense of trustworthiness, a sense of character. If you have a work ethic. A sense of scientific object, a sense of scientific and a sense of religion, a sense of caring for people beyond yourself. and take these values with you the rest of your life and try to nurture our children on those basic values. I wanted to ask you about your PUSH organization Started off as PUSH now the Rainbow PUSH starts in 1971 I think Christmas morning you started it Your wife once said those early days the house was almost like a commune Describe the scene. Well, we all stayed with each other. We were close that way. Kind of Dumbledore style, you know. We met on Christmas Day. Jim Brown was there and Bill Russell and others came from around the country to support efforts to continue using economic boycotts as a lever to get blacks on boards and C-suites and professional services and the like. We're still doing the day run on Wall Street and Silicon Valley. We began that 50 years ago. The next iteration of your organization, long after you one day pass, where would you like to see Rainbow Push? Position to defend, protect, and gain civil rights. locally and globally. Whether there's a crisis in Africa or Central America or Europe, where there's a chance of war and there should be peace, we should be committed to that always. Voter registration and participation in the political process, but put a renewed focus on the private sector. I mean, politics is where the money is, private sector is where the wealth is. You vote reluctantly every two, four, six years. We vote with a dollar every day. You use that leverage to get companies to open up opportunities. The strange thing is that when the doors open, it helps the company. Companies miss out. What does black community represent? Market, money, talent, location, and growth. Market, money, talent, location, and growth. So if you have a kind of insular environment where you can't see the market, the largest are black and brown. I mean, LA to Memphis to New York to Miami, there's too much market and money to miss. But many whites have a stigmatism. They can't see well. They see the world through a keel, not through a door. They can't see the bigger picture. So sometimes we'd be shaking the Melissa open doors. What do you have to do to best position your organization to have success after you? Well, by having staff capable of doing work, we have a senior vice president, we have ministers around the nation who invest in this struggle. There's no doubt in my mind they can carry it on. After all, this is God's work. This is not just my assignment. This is God's work. and God will take care of his own. The organization over the years has received a fair share of criticism. How about the piece of criticism that's bothered you the most? People want us to do more than we can do. A lot of criticism just comes with the territory. Like what? Well, we were engaged in a battle involving I am. a state's attorney in Chicago. The Justice Amolette case. And the state's attorney recused to accept the number two guy, dismissed him, because they do that on nonviolent charges, to keep him overcrowding the jails on nonviolent offenses. No one was shot. And so, but the picture being painted, the Justice was so guilty, everyone would not touch it. I said, it's not right to castigate her about it. I said, besides, the mayor running back forth to New York, he and the police chief discrediting her in the case of Laquan McDonald, where he was, they held the tape back 400 days, spanning an election. He was shot 16 times. Tricks in the back, six miles on the ground. Paid out five million dollars in hush money. Police didn't get upset about that. Paid out millions in hush money. Can't pay people their salaries. What about that? And the cop finally was convicted, first cop convicted in 50 years. 50 years. He got 81 months for killing this boy and shooting him in the back 16 times. The Pendleton, this daughter of ours, was killed after having left the White House and the parade, high profile killing. He got 84 years, 81 months, 84 years. And the mayor was involved in holding back to pay off her money. We had to fight that fight. That's what we do. If you can't fight all those fights, there's so much going on. There's that fight, and there's Medicaid, World Protection, Corporate Justice. There's a lot to do all the time. So you have to kind of pick your fights. Today, of course, with the election here, we decided that it was going to get kind of bitter toward the end. And I had both those candidates stood right here speaking to people on Saturday morning. I was going to sign a pledge that they would meet today, the 3rd of April, have a joint press conference, which they did today. And the idea was, no one just choose sides, choose reconciliation. That's what we did. Chicago Sun-Times columnists once said a group of people surrounding Mr. Jackson have profited from his civil justice involvement, and I think that's disturbing. Your thoughts on criticism like that? That's a compliment. How so? If it's not profit, then we're not done at work. We're trying to get black products on shelves and money in black banks and black insurance companies. We're trying to get access to garbage, and pick up the garbage at stores to make money. Of course they make money. And they support the organization once they make the money. Of course there's no... So it's kind of silly criticism. Of course people that we support support us. That's how we stay in business. To what extent is it a challenge at times to, you know, you run a nonprofit, funding is really important, yet I'd imagine there are times that you kind of question the motives of companies that are giving you money because you would have previously been critical of them. The corporations in America, they have philanthropy. There's several things that they have. They need to have board slots and e-suites and jobs. And so, getting the corporate contributions to sustain our movement, which they really owe the community, there's not some of us challenging them to do the right thing. It never occurred to me if anything went with that. Have you ever considered not taking money from companies you're critical of? Yeah, if we're in the middle of a struggle, if we're in the middle of a boycott, you wouldn't do it at that time. Mm-hmm. That would be bad strategy and bad taste. At what point does it become okay? It's a judgment call. Have there been instances where that's been an internal debate for you? I understand what the lines are. Yeah. Presidency. You've run twice for it. Why did you decide to run? I kind of got pushed into it. We were fighting to get Harold Washington elected. Thought we could win. Ted Kennedy and Mondale decided they were going to come here and campaign for Daley and Jane Byron. We said, please don't come. This is a Democrat primary. We support you guys all the time. They said, we have to come. Daley and Byron and I are friends. We said, we must be chopped liver. So I tried to get Maynard Jackson to run. He wouldn't do it. I tried to get Andy Young to run. He wouldn't do it. I raised somebody that should run, at least in the primaries. And at some point, they began to say, run, Jesse, run. And so I was seriously not just playing. I began to run and learn how to run. And 84 was a learning curve. I learned rules that would change, basically. to learn how to relate to people more effectively. To be in the Mississippi Delta one day and be having cool New Hampshire next day is learning what America is. I mean, I love what it looks like, and that's what it did. I believe it was the 88 election. You win 16 of 21 primaries and caucuses on Super Tuesday. Then you win Michigan. How much of a chance at that point do you think you have to actually get elected? A great chance we didn't have the money. You know, we've got 1,200 delegates with $19 million. Most cost-efficient campaign ever. Why do you think you didn't have the money? People didn't believe how possible this is now then. Which is what? I remember when I was talking to President Barack Obama downtown one day, He said he was a student watching the debate at Columbia, which we did fairly well in. He said, Reverend, I looked at the debate and I said, this can happen. The whole idea was to stir up imagination, it can happen. And once he did it and won twice, now you see a whole lot of people who think they have reasonable talents can run because they run down the path where the grass has been removed out the way. What do you remember from the first time meeting President Obama? His wife and my daughter Santita were classmates. He and my son Jesse were classmates. And they told me how smart he was. His dad, this guy's going someplace. So we sat around the house talking talk. I believe he sought your blessing before standing for election for the Illinois Senate in 1992. Tell about that, like what that entailed. It was not a difficult decision to make because he had the right skill set and the right friendship and relationship with my family, so it was not a difficult decision to make. And one of, correct me if I'm wrong, but one of your daughters was the maid of honor in Barack and Michelle's wedding. How did that come about? My daughter, Santita, she were classmates with Whitney Young. So they were close that way. You said his election to the presidency was the last lap of a 60-year race. Describe what you mean by that. 54, Jim Crow becomes illegal. 55, the Montgomery Busport card. 64 public accommodation bill, 65 the right to vote, 68 Dr. King killed. And really from 68 to 08, it's a 40-year run through the wilderness. So to go from slave ship to the White House, to go from the balcony in Memphis, the balcony of the White House was quite a journey. And so getting to the big house with the keys is the last step of that journey. there are fights beyond that that we now see. Because people can, you know, have the keys forever. And life is dynamic, not static. So it was, again, from being denied the right to vote, to have an African-American president was a long and meaningful journey. What was the emotion of that night for you when he was elected? You know, it was, I wept because it was the moment. And it was the memories. I looked up on the screen where we had been in 68 during the upheaval in Chicago at the Democratic Convention, right in front of Everton magazine. He had won the big one. He had won the big one, you know. The poor people who made it happen were not there. They couldn't afford to come to Chicago. People who paid the price with their blood and who for many years didn't have the right to vote, they couldn't afford to be there. And I long for their presence. I wish Dr. King, Maggie Evans, could have been there just like for 15 seconds, just have seen the glory of their work. It was quite an emotional moment. Why do you think you had a less strong relationship with the Obama administration than perhaps it could have been? Oh, that was his choice to make, you know. I respect him so much. I worked for him vigorously around the world. There was always some people trying to create chaos for us, but his work was so splendid. He came into office, we lost 800,000 jobs in one month. I began jobs every month for eight years. 26 million people getting health insurance for the first time. Climate change, building at the oil industry. His family had dignity, no corruption, no scandal. So I was just, I remained enamored over what he did. What do you think looking back could have made the relationship between the two of you during the time of his presidency stronger? I don't know, really. Because to me, he was strong. Always supported him. And I still support him very much. I think he's a very wise man. And he should have a long time to give a lot of service. You did spend more time in other administrations before his. Were you surprised that there wasn't more engagement? You know, it never worried me. I had enough access, people in his administration. I gloried in the judges he appointed. I spent a lot of time in Africa and Europe and in America organizing, reduced the cost of education, rule of registration, rule of fortification, in unnecessary wars against Syria and against Libya. So I remain very involved, and I have the highest regard for Barack and Michelle. I think they meant a lot to our nation. How about the most satisfying moment from your career? Well, it was walking with and beside Dr. King. That was a very gratifying experience. Bringing Americans home from foreign jails, bringing women home from Cuba, I mean, from Syria. American's home from Cuba, American's home from Iraq, and Yugoslavia. Those were very gratifying moments. And when I got back with Goodman Reagan, he said, don't know what you're doing. If you do go bring him back, forget it, bring him back. Okay? Got it. Thank you very much. Thanks for listening to my interview with Reverend Jesse Jackson. To see more of our time together, go to youtube.com slash Graham Bensinger.