This message comes from MS Now. On their new podcast, MS Now presents Clock It. Washington Power Players Simone Sanders-Townson and Eugene Daniels discuss how the latest political news and the catchiest cultural moments converge. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, you're listening to Code Switch from NPR. I'm B.A. Parker. And I'm Gene Demby. We are just a few days into more than a week of memorial services and homegoings, honoring the life of Reverend Jesse Jackson from Chicago to South Carolina to Washington, D.C., and back again. Reverend Jackson died on February 17th at the age of 84. And his passing has brought about a discussion of his legacy and how we should be remembering him. And it's brought up a lot of personal memories for me. Growing up, I knew him as the Keep Hope Alive man from a framed autograph that my great aunt keeps in her living room. Keep Hope Alive being the famous quote from his 1988 keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. 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. Gene, how did you first encounter Reverend Jackson? I mean, I think that might have been it. Like, I was really, really young. And I remember my mom and other people talking excitedly about Jesse Jackson, who, of course, had been running for president. And he was the first, like, really viable black candidate for president. That was the thing I knew about him. You see me on TV, but you don't know the media makes me me. They wonder why does Jesse run? Because they see me running for the White House? They don't see the house I'm running from? I have a story. I wasn't always on television. His Democratic National Convention speeches were pretty iconic. This is not a perfect party. We are not a perfect people. Yet we are called to a perfect mission. Our mission, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to house the homeless, to teach the illiterate, to provide jobs for the jobless, and to choose the human race over the nuclear race. And then Reverend Jackson was kind of everywhere in the 1990s, right? Like, Jesse Jackson was the black dude who became the default spokesperson for black folks on seemingly every big news show, around every big news controversy, around race and black folks. And over time, you know, I started filling in the gaps. I didn't realize when I was that young that he was one of Martin Luther King's, like, most trusted deputies, right? And I think about that famous photo of King's dead body just seconds after he'd been shot. And Ralph Abernathy and a really young Jesse Jackson pointing in the direction the bullet had just come from. Right. Reverend Jackson was so embedded in the fabric of civil rights in the 1960s. First with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNCC, and their efforts to help pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And then he grew into this more and more ever-present figure in politics, on television, and in the culture at large. You could see him on Sesame Street. But I am. But I am. Somebody. Somebody. I am black. I am black. Brown. Brown. White. White. I speak a different language. That was so good. On a different world. Jesse! Jesse! Jesse! Jesse! Jesse! Jesse! Jesse! Jesse! that rainbow president? Yes, yes, Mr. Wayne. You weren't supposed to be here until dinner time. I'm early because my flight actually took off on time for a change. The Rainbow Coalition, Jesse Jackson! Or Saturday Night Live. Tonight, rather than read from first and second Samuel, I read from Sam I Am. According to the Latter-day St. Seuss, You do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them. Sam, I am. And that affects a person's legacy, right? At a certain point, he's not just a civil rights leader. He's a politician and a celebrity, someone who has to interact with new generations of ideas and styles and ways of communicating. Yeah, and because he was around for so long, Parker, like, he got to mess up very publicly, right? Like, in the Chicago Sun-Times obituate for him, I was reading. And the writer said that, you know, Martin Luther King Jr. died young, so he's, like, frozen in time, like the martyr with the grand dream, right? Whereas Jesse Jackson lived this meaningful and messy life He had all these you know personal shortcomings He made mistakes He said things that were messed up right Those missteps and that messiness were often used to disparage him and like more broadly the causes that he supported Right. Reverend Jackson lived long enough to be fallible in the public eye. So much so that it at times seems to have overshadowed some of his accomplishments and the profound ways that he affected American culture and politics. Like, I didn't know that he was a go-to hostage negotiator under Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. Like, he helped secure the release of hundreds of American hostages in foreign detention. But I was fully aware of some of his misdeeds, like, you know, his extramarital relationships and family drama. so how do we make sense of the life and legacy of this complex and consequential figure well for one thing we should not be cynical at least that's what adam serwer says he's a writer at the atlantic who recently wrote a piece about reverend jackson's life and i spoke with adam about why he thinks it's so important for all of us not to flatten him into a cliche or caricature This message comes from WISE, the app for international people using money around the globe. You can send, spend, and receive in up to 40 currencies with only a few simple taps. Be smart. Get WISE. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. This message comes from the BBC with its new podcast, The Interface. Every Thursday, three leading tech journalists explore how tech is rewiring your week and your world. Listen to The Interface on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Adam Serwer is a writer at The Atlantic who grew up in Washington, D.C. in the 1990s. And he says the way people around him thought about Reverend Jesse Jackson was very different from the way he was portrayed on television. I remember thinking that the seriousness with which people regarded Jesse Jackson as a heroic figure, someone who was a leader, who really cared about the community, was very different from what I saw on late night TV and in the news media, where there was this sort of undercurrent of almost eye rolling, treating him as kind of an almost comic figure. Can you sing? I like to by the King. What's your favorite tune, Jesse? red rubber ball by the circle. Red rubber ball by the circle. Yeah, I know. I know. It's a 60s thing and it's exciting. In a way that I think was sort of almost deliberately diminishing of who he was and what he meant to so many people. Was it just the right that characterized Jackson in an almost cartoonish villain way? Oh, no, it was definitely not just the right. I mean, like I said, you know, it was very common to see jokes about Jesse Jackson on like 90s late night, stuff like that. And, you know, certainly Bill Clinton had sort of a frenemy relationship with him. And Democratic Party officials in the 80s were taken by surprise by his strength in the primaries and were freaking out about it and didn't know how to respond. But, you know, I think there was the way that the right talked about him specifically was meant to diminish him, meant to make him a punchline. And, you know, there were constantly jokes like Rush Limbaugh made a particularly racist joke that stuck in my mind of Jesse Jackson. Have you noticed that Jesse Jackson always looks like the composite of the black person the police are looking for? I thought that it's such an interesting joke to me because I think that the teller of that joke is expressing their own racism in a way that must be obvious even to the joke listener. Yeah. Why do you think that is like that that difference between how people around you saw him versus the stuff you saw on TV? I think that people around me, because DC at the time was still a mostly Black city, I think they felt like Jesse Jackson was somebody who really supported the community and helped the community. And I think if you weren't a part of that community and you only saw him when he started running for president or when he was involved in a high profile story, it might be easy to believe that Jesse Jackson was just some sort of publicity hound. But a lot of the work that he did, helping out people, you know, workers who were on strike, LGBT people protesting for their rights, he was always very much about that rainbow coalition that he talked about, about helping anybody who needed his presence. My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected and the despised. They are restless and seek relief. They have voted in record numbers. They have invested the faith, hope and trust that they have in us. The Democratic Party must— And I think to some people, the way that was portrayed, because they didn't have those connections, seemed like he was somebody who was just looking to get in front of a camera So of course Jesse Jackson has this immense political and civil rights legacy I mean his life wasn just about him being in front of the cameras but there was his earlier activism in the 60s with Dr Martin Luther King Jr There's the 70s with his like I am somebody speech in the 80s, including like his bid for president in, I think, 1984 and 1988. My fellow Americans, it is my honor to introduce the next president of the United States of America, the Reverend Jesse Lewis Jackson. Can you remind us of Jackson's influence over the last 60 plus years? I mean, I think he was a tremendous influence, especially politically, especially in terms of black office holders. I mean, remember, the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 before Jesse Jackson and the Black vote was in a force in the same way that it became under him to where it basically controlled the destiny of whoever wanted to be the nominee of the Democratic Party. I mean, I think that a lot of Black political figures, especially mayors, come out of that sort of ferment of the 80s where Black people are becoming more politically active thanks to the fact that they're able to now, given robust enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. And I think Barack Obama simply does not happen without Jesse Jackson, without how he changes and affects the Democratic Party, without how he helps bring black voters into the system as like a politically active constituency in the aftermath of the civil rights movement. I just think he's a tremendously influential figure for that reason, because it's shaped our politics for the past few decades. Is there one moment in Reverend Jackson's life or political history that you would use to really define his life and career? I don't know if I can pick a single moment, but for me, that 1988 speech at the Democratic Convention where he's discussing America as a quilt. Now, Democrats, we must build such a quilt. Farmers, you seek fair prices and you are right, but you cannot stand alone. Your patch is not big enough. Workers, you fight for fair wages, you are right, but your patch labor is not big enough. Women, you seek comparable worth and pay equity. You're right. But your patch is not big enough. Women, mothers who seek head start and daycare and prenatal care on the front side of life, rather than jail care and welfare on the back side of life, you're right. But your patch is not big enough. So we all need to stitch together as a coalition in order to fight for the justice that we all need. I think that is one of the most moving articulations of what I think political liberalism is supposed to be, that it is an articulation of sort of the ideal of the Democratic Party. The idea that everybody deserves a fair shake regardless of where they come from. And I think he articulated that in 1988 better than anybody else. It's interesting that you as a reporter were able to sort of watch Reverend Jackson evolve in more recent history. I found an article you wrote in 2009 where you reported on Reverend Jackson's response to, I think, Representative Arthur Davis of Alabama voting against health care reform. And he said, like, you can't vote against health care and call yourself a black man. And that didn't go over well, did it? No, I mean, look, I think Archer Davis at the time was making a political calculation about where Georgia was going. And he thought if he could run as a conservative black man, then he could potentially win statewide office. you know but i think anytime you're making a kind of racially essentialist argument about if you're white you should do this if you're black you should do this i'm probably going to object to it you know i think davis miscalculated very badly uh he ended up leaving the democratic party he didn't win his election and he hasn't won a major office since well this was also like the post obama election where racial politics definitely had a shift and how was reverend Jackson able to fit within that shift. I think that Jackson was obviously very moved by Obama's election. I mean, there's that iconic photo of him crying at the election party in Chicago. But I think the Obama era was awkward for a lot of Black activists because challenging the president in power to do better by Black people was a lot more awkward when the president is the most popular person in the Black community at that time. And people who saw themselves as Black leaders in a certain political tradition had a much harder time pushing Obama in the direction they wanted to push him because of his personal popularity in the Democratic base With Reverend Jackson he one of the few civil rights activists we gotten to see live a long life And we gotten to see him be fallible How do you make sense of Reverend Jackson's legacy? I think he's one of the most important political figures of the past 50 years, particularly in the context of the Democratic Party, for American politics in general, because he does so much to encourage Black people to participate in the political process and register voters and help Black voters emerge as a bloc that can influence the Democratic Party in order to defend or advance its interests. And you simply do not have this sort of second reconstruction of black office holders across the country without the kind of visibility and encouragement and on the ground work that he did, making sure that black people had an opportunity to participate in the political process. Earlier, I spoke with Georgia Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock on the life and legacy of Jesse Jackson. I sit here, and while I worked hard, I'm very clear that he was literally the bridge between the civil rights movement and the kind of multiracial coalition that makes someone like me possible in the United States Senate. I think the coalition that propels Obama to the presidency in 2008 and 2012, I think it's very easy to dismiss it as sort of a fait accompli. But the idea of that coalition really comes from Jackson's earlier runs and stitching that coalition together. And he's kind of the Moses to Barack Obama's Joshua in this sense, because he brings together that coalition in the kind of numbers that are capable of winning the nomination against Hillary Clinton, who was supposed to be the anointed nominee at that time. So I think it's not his only legacy or arguably his most important legacy, but it is a very important legacy that Jesse Jackson pays away for Barack Obama's coalition in 2008. And I mean, look, this coalition that is always trying to pull the Democratic Party to the left, to some extent, it is Jesse Jackson's coalition. I mean, not exactly the same people, but it's a constituency that he served. I think you could argue that Jesse Jackson, he sort of invents the social democratic wing of the Democratic Party. You know, people like Bernie Sanders, AOC, Mom Donnie, these are all people who come out of sort of Jackson's tradition of what they think government power should be used to do and the kinds of voters that they appeal to. I spoke with Reverend Jackson today. He said, we have survived apart. Now we must learn how to live together. I think sometimes we take for granted all that he has accomplished. Today, when people say, you know, black and white and Latino and Asian American and Native American and gay and straight have got to stand together, people were not talking like that 30 or 40 years ago. Obama is the most successful of the political figures who are downstream of Jackson, but he has many sort of political children, so to speak. Adam, thank you so much Thank you for having me There is the call of conscience Redemption, expansion, healing, and unity Leadership must heed the call of conscience Redemption, expansion, healing, and unity Forbear the key to achieving our mission Time is neutral and does not change things. With courage and initiative, leaders change things. No generation can choose the age or circumstance in which it is born, but through leadership it can choose to make the age in which it is born an age of enlightenment, an age of jobs, and peace and justice. And that's our show. You can follow us on Instagram at NPR Code Switch. If email is more your thing, ours is codeswitch at npr.org. And subscribe to the podcast on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also subscribe to the Code Switch newsletter by going to npr.org slash codeswitchnewsletter. And just a reminder that signing up for Code Switch Plus is a great way to support our show and public media. You might have heard, we could use your help. And you get to listen to every episode of our show and a bunch of others sponsor free. So please find out more at plus.npr.org slash Code Switch. This episode was produced by Kayla Lattimore and Xavier Lopez. It was edited by Dalia Mortada and Leah Dinella. And we will be remiss if we did not shout out the rest of the Code Switch Massive. That's Jess Kung, Christina Kala, and Yolanda Sanguini. As for me, I'm Gene Demby. I'm B.A. Parker. Be easy, y'all. Hydrate.
