Jesse Jackson on Sesame Street 1972
I am...somebody!
This was the beginning of a stirring "call and response" used in many settings, including Sesame Street, by Baptist preacher, Civil Rights activist, and presidential candidate Jesse Jackson. Jackson died earlier this week at the age of 84. He had faded from public view as he aged and dealt with Parkinson's Disease yet he was a significant figure in America for many years.
From left, civil rights advocates Hosea Williams, Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on April 3, 1968, a day before King was assassinated. (Charles Kelly/AP)
Jackson was accused by critics of being a performer, of stretching the truth at times, and of personal moral failure, but he was at the front lines of change during the turbulent 1960s and beyond. Of course, similar accusations have been made against Civil Rights icon, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Jesse grew up poor and Black in the South and found his was into the non-violent movement of Dr. King that often put him in danger.
While Jackson's two attempts at securing the Democratic presidential nomination failed he arguably opened the way for President Barack Obama, even though they didn't always get along.
I admired Jackson despite the criticisms and he deserves to be recognized for his oratorical prowess and ability to help the dispossessed believe that they mattered. That is so important to an authentic gospel message that is still needed today.
I heard Dr. Jackson when he came to Sudbury's Laurentian University in the early1990s as a guest of the lecture series. It wasn't long after he'd appeared on Saturday Night Live, the late night sketch comedy show. Theodore Geisel -- Dr. Seuss -- had recently died so Jackson read a portion of Green Eggs and Ham as part of the SNL news report. During the Q & A at Laurentian someone in the audience asked him to reprise that moment and actually had a copy of the book with him but Jackson graciously declined.
Thank God for Jesse Jackson.
4 comments:
I'll bet Jesse Jackson was there as a part of the Falconbridge Lecture Series. That was a phenomenal program for the University community and for the Sudbury community as a whole. I believe it was an initiative of of LU President Dr. Henry Best in conjunction with Falconbridge . I recall many Nobel Prize winners; Gerald Durrell, the naturalist and conservationist; Dr. Benjamin Spock of child-rearing fame; John Kenneth Galbraith and many, many more...KB
Thanks for recollecting the series, Kathy, and naming some of the other esteemed speakers. I also heard Donald Johanson, the paleoanthropologist who discovered "Lucy" in Africa. I wonder how many of the speakers knew what they were in for travelling to Northern Ontario in winter?
I heard him speak when I was in the States in the early 90s. He was so dynamic.
So many of the finest orators through the decades have emerged from the Black church experience. There is something about the cadence and conviction that is captiviating. Thanks Laurie.
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