Remembering Jesse Jackson, who pushed to globalize the US civil rights movement

James Zogby: Thank you. It has been a tough day, and there’ve been almost five decades of memories just rushing through my head. He was so important to me, to my community, to issues that we all care about, and he has a legacy that has affected so many people, just a world historical individual.

He was a guy who, when you traveled with him, was as comfortable in Cairo as he was in Chicago. Walking the streets, people knew him. They waved. They wanted their picture taken with him. They wanted to touch and shake his hand. And he used that political capital to advocate for justice, to challenge authorities and to seek freedom for prisoners, and in one case to go to Armenia after a terrible natural disaster to give hope to people. He did things like that because he knew he had this appeal, and he used it for the good, much like the pope would. He was a person who, wherever he went, was recognized, and people knew that he could do good things for them.

Well, he was infuriated by the fact that Andrew Young had met with the PLO representative at the UN.

Right. And a former civil rights leader in his own regard. And when Andrew Young got fired for that, Jesse said, “We’re going.” Arrangements were made. He talked about how he deplored the US no-talk policy. “You can’t have peace if you don’t talk.” And so he said, “I’m going to meet Arafat,” and he did. It didn’t change the policy, but he challenged the Democratic Party to end its no-talk policy about the issue of Palestinian rights and justice. And so, in 1988, we led a fight within the party convention to have the question of Palestine discussed. We had a plank. It was mutual recognition, territorial compromise and self-determination for both Israelis and Palestinians. There was an uproar, and I negotiated with Madeleine Albright. And when I said, “We just want the issue of Palestinian rights mentioned in the platform,” she said, “if the P word is even spoken, all hell will break loose.” There was pressure within the Jackson campaign of some of the electeds, “Please don’t do this. There’ll be a backlash.” He looked at me, and he said, “We’re going to do it, but let’s figure [out] a way to do it that doesn’t tear things apart.” We won the moral high ground because we ended the silence on Palestine, and he awakened a wing in the party, a progressive wing, that carried on that tradition that said, “We’re going to represent those who don’t have a voice right now.” For my community, it was significant because up until his campaign in ‘84, no candidate had ever had reached out to the Arab American community. They had actually returned our contributions and rejected our endorsements. Jesse changed all that. And, he said, “We’re going to be a home for Arab Americans, a home for Jewish Americans, and we’re going to work together.” And we did. And that continued. We elected 80 delegates, Arab Americans, in 1988. Prior to that, we had four. Candidates now seek our contributions, and it opened a door for us that had never been opened before.

He’d asked me to prepare the ground and see what was possible. People in the campaign were [saying], ”If this isn’t going to work, we don’t want to do it, it’s too close to the election.” I could not get a guarantee that he would meet with [former Syrian President Bashar] al-Assad, certainly couldn’t get a guarantee that would free Goodman, and so I advised him not to go. That always will be a black stain on my biography. I’m the guy who told Jackson not to go to Syria. But he knew that he would get it done because of the power of his personality and that Assad was not gonna say “no” once Jesse Jackson set foot in the country. He knew if he could just get there, he would get it done. And he did it.  

It was, but his life was one of taking risks, wasn’t it? He took them when it was the right thing to do, and he did the good thing that needed to get done. Nobody else could have gotten Goodman back. And unlike our current president, for whom the negotiations are transactional, with Jesse, it was based on the moral high ground, on moral authority. And I saw him in other situations dealing with the same kind of thing and making it work because he was Jesse Jackson, and people respected him and/or feared the popularity that he had with public opinions worldwide.

Well, it was in the aftermath of [the] Oslo [Accords]. There was a lot of hope that something might happen, but our hopes were dimmed immediately when we arrived. 

Right. The Israelis were not interested in relinquishing control. No to anything in Jerusalem, no to any political meetings, no to anything that would bring Palestinians from outside Jerusalem into the city. And we talked to [former Israeli Prime Ministers] Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin and got nowhere. And so, Jesse said, “We’re doing it.” They finally relented, “You can do it, but you can’t leave the hotel.” One of the speakers we’d invited was Faisal Husseini, a leading Palestinian who lived in Orient House, and that was where his offices were, and we did the conference. We left the hotel, and Jesse said, “We’re going over there.” The Israelis, meanwhile, had surrounded the hotel and circled it with troops. And he said, “We’re going through.” And in a nonviolent way, this was done in the south, we marched through the troops. Many of us were nervous, we didn’t know what the Israelis would do. But what happened was, despite the commanders of the troops barking orders at their young soldiers, these soldiers saw Jesse Jackson and wanted to get their pictures taken with him, and so they broke ranks to circle him and try to get pictures with him. And again, it was the personal power of the man, defying authority to do the right thing, and finally the commanders backed down because they weren’t willing to buck Jesse Jackson.

Well, that was quite fascinating because there was a national organization of Black women that was holding their conference there. Jesse had become, over the decades, very enamored of the African American-African connection. And so, they wanted to do it in Cairo. And we met with [former Egyptian] President [Hosni] Mubarak, [and] met with the pope. Jesse was pretty much taken up with the pope, Pope Shenouda [III] of the Coptic [Orthodox] Church. And I remember him basically sitting at the pope’s feet, almost, next to him, just asking him questions about the early Christian Church in Africa and the connections between early Christianity and the African continent. And I knew, because I knew the reverend, that over the next several days, that would be worked into his speeches. And it did. He was very much taken up by the history of Egypt. He was sitting, one time, I walked out on the balcony of the Semiramis Hotel where we were staying, and he was sitting there looking out at the Nile [River]. And without looking at me, he just said, “I’ve been to Moscow, I’ve been to Paris, I’ve been to many places. They’re all great cities. This is more than that. This is a civilization. There’s thousands of years going past us right now with this river as it flows by.” He was very much taken by the power of being in Egypt. We went to the pyramids, and we did the whole thing, and it just really stayed with him.

His moral authority. In a simple phrase. He built credibility by the challenges that he presented to authority, by the courage of his conviction, by the power of his commitment to doing the right thing and taking risks. And so, when he achieved that moral authority, he used it for good. Some people can just sit on their laurels. He didn’t. He took advantage of the situation to get things done. Let me just say, one of the last things I did with him, I’d seen him since then, but in January of 2024, we held a summit on Gaza at Operation PUSH, and [the] reverend came. He wasn’t speaking a lot because the illness had taken hold. But he listened intently. He did say some words that were quite inspiring. And then at the very end, as I was leaving, I went over to say goodbye. And he grabbed my hand and he just looked at me, and he said, “Remember the babies, they’re dying every day.” That was the last thing he said to me.

For him, it wasn’t either/or.  Injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere. If one people are oppressed, all people will pay a price for it. When he saw what was happening in Lebanon, it made him grieve. When he saw Andy Young get fired for simply speaking to the representative at the UN — he was the UN ambassador for the United States negotiating issues on the Middle East — to say he couldn’t speak with a Palestinian without getting fired was unconscionable. And he felt the same about what was happening in Ireland, certainly what was happening in South Africa, what was happening in Eastern Europe. I mean, all of these caused him grief. If people were dying, if our weapons were causing people to die, if our policies were causing people to suffer, then as a leader in America, he had to speak out. And he did. As Jesse used to say, “No policy is foreign to anyone in America. Because our nation operates on the world stage, our people and our leaders have an obligation to address the world stage.”