KEEP FIGHTING
(adapted from the afterword of Keeping Hope Alive: Sermons and Speeches of Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr., ed. Grace Ji Sun Kim)
When I was fifteen years old, I attended the 1984 Democratic National Convention as a special guest of the Mississippi Democratic Party. It was, without exaggeration, an extraordinary experience. Ms. Dorothy Miles, a leader of the party in Jackson County, made it all happen. She watched me canvas neighborhoods in the brutal Mississippi heat and put up yard signs for candidates. She also saw that, in the same year of the convention, I had been elected the first Black youth governor in the Mississippi YMCA Youth Legislature. Many wondered, perhaps naively given what has happened since, if the young people of the state foreshadowed what was possible. Ms. Miles believed a trip to San Francisco would deepen my political passions and give me an opportunity to see, up close, national politics at work. She was right. With a few phone calls, I had my credentials (thanks to Rep. Bennie Thompson), and I was on a plane, alone, to California.
The Mississippi delegation drew one of the worst hotels available to delegates. We were right on the edge of the Tenderloin district, on the southern slope of Nob Hill. For a Catholic country boy from the Gulf Coast, I had never seen anything like what I saw. And I saw everything. Secrets I will take to my grave.
We had the best seats in the convention hall. I watched as Mario Cuomo delivered his famous “Tale of Two Cities” speech. I witnessed up close the intense battles raging within the convention as the established Black political class and white Democratic power brokers tried desperately to beat back the insurgent campaign of Rev. Jesse Jackson.
Rev. Jackson’s historic presidential run in 1984 shook the foundations of the party. He campaigned for deep cuts in defense spending, for jobs, health care, public housing, for protecting the environment, policies to benefit both rural and urban America, and for a politics less concerned about the well-being of the rich and more focused on the conditions of the most vulnerable among us. His appeal cut across traditional divides as a “rainbow coalition” offered a different vision of the country. I watched as Julian Bond, Andrew Young, and Coretta Scott King urged the Jackson delegates to support Walter Mondale. I stood, with my mouth wide open, as they booed Mrs. King. In some ways, and perhaps it was the last gasp of a dying era, Rev. Jackson brought the energy of the civil rights movement into the electoral process; and the Black political elites of the Democratic Party were expected to fall in line.
I will never forget Rev. Jackson’s speech. As a young, Black teenager from the deep South, he expanded my imagination of what was possible. Honestly, I had never seen anything or heard anyone like him (at least, in the flesh). Whatever Barack Obama’s campaign inspired in this generation, I am confident I felt it on the night of July 18, 1984. One way to put it would be that what Selma was to Rev. Jackson, this moment—against the backdrop of Ronald Reagan—was to me. Something powerfully transformative happened when Rev. Jackson stepped to the podium. Pipe dreams and adolescent illusions about what was possible in this country fell to the side as the reality of Jackson’s powerful challenge to the status quo flooded the convention hall. His opening lines revealed the underlying theology of his public witness.
Tonight we come together bound by our faith in a mighty God, with genuine respect and love for our country, and inheriting the legacy of a great party, the Democratic Party, which is the best for redirecting our nation on a more humane, just, and peaceful course.
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.
I clung to every word. He laid bare a vision and a challenge to the party and to the country that rejected the callous policies of Reagan and modern conservatism. It was a vision rooted in his Christian commitment to exemplify the ministry and sacrifice of Jesus in our contemporary living.
Rev. Jackson ended his speech like a good Baptist preacher. I vaguely remember being carried away by it all. What I remember most, and time hasn’t diminished the memory at all, was a feeling of being charged to do more and to be better.
Our time has come. Our time has come. Suffering breeds character. Character breeds faith. In the end, faith will not disappoint.
Our time has come. Our faith, hope, and dreams will prevail. Our time has come. Weeping has endured for nights, but now joy cometh in the morning.
Our time has come. No grave can hold our body down. Our time has come. No lie can live forever.
Rev. Jackson bookended his convention speech with a political theology that informed his work since the early days of Operation Breadbasket. His rhetoric and style contained the blue note of slavery and segregation, the difficulty and promise of migration, and the resilient hope of a people who faced ongoing betrayal by the country. Rev. Jackson brought to the convention floor our tradition in the service, as it has been before, of saving the nation. No theological abstractions were necessary. Just an affirmation of the personality and dignity of every human being no matter their color, gender, sexual orientation, or zip code in pursuit of a more just world.
I remember walking into an elevator. I don’t recall where or what was the context. I was alone, or I think I was alone (time is ruthless with details), and I had my head down. Somewhat overwhelmed by it all, I was in my own little world thinking about what I had seen and experienced. I knew I would never be the same.
The elevator stopped. The doors opened. I looked up, and in walked Rev. Jackson with his entourage. He towered over me, and I kept staring endlessly upward. He was so tall. Rev. Jackson smiled, shook my hand firmly, and asked where I was from. I don’t remember much of what was said after that except his final words as he walked out of the elevator. “Keep studying and keep fighting.”
Rev. Jackson fought until he took his last breath. Today’s Democratic Party is not the party he imagined. President Clinton’s “Sista Souljah” moment did its work. The Democratic Leadership Council and its legacies maneuvered and menaced. Black folk and unions had to be put in their place. The Party has never been the same. Well…here we are in the midst of the storm. Fighting still.
Rev. Jackson lived a long, public life, full of peaks and valleys—he never claimed to be perfect or without sin—but his abiding faith in the capacity of ordinary people to transform the world fortified his spirit to fight on behalf of the least of these. Now he can rest. And with his witness as a resource, we will continue the fight.