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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.
We’re continuing our look at the life and legacy of the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who died today at the age of 84, a civil rights icon, two-time presidential candidate.
We’re joined now by two guests. Larry Hamm is a longtime civil rights activist. He’s chair of the People’s Organization for Progress. He was co-chair of the Jackson for President campaign in New Jersey in 1988, also a Jackson delegate at the Democratic National Convention then and the former resident of — president of the New Jersey chapter of the Rainbow Coalition. And we’re joined by Clarence Lusane, political science professor at Howard University, the director of the International Affairs Program there.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Professor Clarence Lusane, let’s begin with you. You woke up this morning with this news of this historic figure having passed, the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Your thoughts on his significance, on his life and legacy?
CLARENCE LUSANE: Good morning, Amy. Good morning, Larry, as well.
Yeah, my phone has been blowing up with texts from not just people here in the U.S., but from around the world, as the news spread.
I want to echo what Bernie Sanders said about Jackson’s contribution. Jackson’s life contributed to making this country more democratic, more inclusive, more fair. What Jackson was able to do was to marry movements, grassroots movements, with electoral politics. Prior to the 1980s, a lot of activists who were working on issues, from anti-nuclear kinds of concerns to peace issues to civil rights, had a kind of sketchy relationship with electoral politics. And Jackson saw that that was a vehicle for being able to bring this country to its principles that it espouses.
And so, in ’84 and in ’88, Jackson was doing two things. One was building an electoral movement that would make the Democratic Party and electoral politics more democratic, but at the same time, he was also building a movement outside of that, the National Rainbow Coalition, which picked up the mantle from the civil rights movement and from what Dr. King and others had been doing in the 1960s and brought that into the 1980s and beyond. And his contributions were not just domestic, of course, but also international, not only working with folks who were working around issues like human rights and peace, but just a range of concerns that people had around the world, including, of course, the anti-apartheid movement.
AMY GOODMAN: And talk about that, especially for young people who aren’t so familiar with the movement to take down apartheid in South Africa, and going back to 1966, the March Against Fear in Mississippi, oh, up through — what was it? — 2000 with the fight around Gore and Bush.
CLARENCE LUSANE: Yeah, the 1966 March Against Fear happened in Mississippi. This was three years after King had given his speech at the March on Washington, “I Have a Dream” speech. And Medgar Evers had been killed. And James Meredith, who was a local activist in Mississippi, started a march. He was shot during that march, but that then galvanized the entire civil rights movement to come to Mississippi. So, Jackson was there, King was there, Stokely Carmichael was there. That’s where Stokely Carmichael made his famous statement about Black Power. And that’s important, because what we see with Jackson is that he brought together the disparate parts of not only the Black political movement, people who were nationalists, people who considered themselves socialists, people who considered themselves liberals, even Black conservatives, Jackson would galvanize and rally, and when he ran in ’88 and ’84, but Jackson also brought together people outside of the civil rights community and outside of the Black community. And so, that was really kind of a turning point.
So, then we get into 1983, and there’s a big celebration of the 20th anniversary of the March on Washington, but it’s also protests against Reagan. Reagan had been elected in 1980 and launched the harshest anti-civil rights presidency to that date. And so Jackson and civil rights leaders and trade unions and others called for this march. And at that March, there was a grassroot — there had been a grassroots movement growing, and it swelled: “Run Jesse Run!” So, this wasn’t Jackson just saying, “I want to be president.” This was a recognition of Jackson’s work, his moral and political clarity in that moment. And he launched not only his presidential campaign, which many of us worked on, and Larry was critical in that, Ron Daniels, Jack O’Dell, others, but he also launched the National Rainbow Coalition, and they worked in parallel.
And as Bernie said and others have noted, the reason Barack Obama becomes president in 2008 is because of the work that Jackson and others, like Fannie Lou Hamer, who made sure that the Democratic Party would democratize and change the rules of the game, so that when Obama ran in 2008, he was running under very different circumstances than even when Jackson ran in 1984 and 1988.
And Jackson continued that inside-outside strategy pretty much all of his life. He was active around the Gore v. Bush controversy, for example, where in 2000, when Gore ran against Bush, and essentially Florida stole the election, there was a suit, and Clarence Thomas and others on the Supreme Court basically gave the election to — the Electoral College to George W. Bush. Jackson was one of the people out in the street who was organizing and mobilizing around that movement. So, he never kind of gave up at any point along the way.
And again, just really quickly, on the anti-apartheid movement, for decades, the South African white minority held the Black majority under severe segregation. And there had been a global movement to bring down that government. Jackson was a central voice in this country consistently on raising that issue. And then, when finally Mandela was released from prison, Nelson Mandela, who was the leader of the African National Congress, Jackson was there. And after Mandela became president, Jackson continued to support a new South Africa and a more democratic South Africa. So, it’s really important, as you note, that this is taught. And at Howard University, we certainly include Jackson in our courses on Black politics and in other areas.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you, Clarence Lusane, for being with us, political science professor at Howard University, director of the International Affairs Program. His books include Twenty Dollars and Change: Harriet Tubman and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice and Democracy and The Black History of the White House.
He talked about, professor Clarence Lusane, Larry. That’s Larry Hamm, civil rights activist, chairman of the People’s Organization for Progress, co-chair of the Jackson for President campaign in New Jersey in 1988, also a Jackson delegate at the Democratic Convention in 1988 and former president of New Jersey chapter of Rainbow Coalition.
I wanted to go to a clip of Reverend Jackson speaking again when he ran for president in 1988. We’re showing an old clip of you, Larry, holding up a poster that says “Jesse! Jesse!” and your yellow T-shirt says “Jersey, Jesse.” Let’s go to a clip.
REV. JESSE JACKSON: We must never surrender. America will get better and better. Keep hope alive. Keep hope alive! Keep hope alive!
AMY GOODMAN: “Keep hope alive.” That was the phrase before “hope,” that remarkable picture with Barack Obama. But you go way back. Go back to 1971, Larry.
LARRY HAMM: Well, that was my first contact with Jesse Jackson, in 1971. I had been invited to the SCLC, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, national convention in New Orleans to receive an award. I had just been appointed to the Board of Education in Newark by Ken Gibson, the first Black mayor of Newark.
AMY GOODMAN: And you were the youngest-ever member —
LARRY HAMM: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: — of the Board of Education.
LARRY HAMM: Yes, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: You would later become known as Adhimu.
LARRY HAMM: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: And you were a protégé of Amiri Baraka.
LARRY HAMM: That is correct. And I was invited down by Coretta Scott King, and I met many of the civil rights leaders that were still living at that time, including Jesse Jackson. In fact, that was my first introduction to his oratorical powers. He spoke one night for almost like three hours, I think, at the dinner. And then, again we crossed paths at the National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana, in 1972, and Jesse gave one of his most famous speeches at the opening of the National Black Political Convention in Gary in 1972.
But then, as you mentioned, Amy, in 1984, he ran for president. At that time, we had formed in Newark the People’s Organization for Progress in 1982. But in ’84, we formed another group called Friends of Jesse Jackson to campaign for Jesse and to raise money for him. And then, in ’88, everything came together in the 1988 campaign. I was co-chair of his campaign in New Jersey and a Jesse Jackson delegate.
And I want to say, one of the major impacts that Jesse had — and I remember this fight pretty clearly — was the question of winner-take-all versus proportional representation. At the convention, you were selected to be the presidential nominee based on the number of delegates you won. And if you won a district, you got all the delegates. Jesse Jackson helped change that so it was proportional. You got the number of delegates in proportion to the number of votes you received. And I think that that mechanistically was one of the things that helped pave the way, as Bernie Sanders and professor Lusane mentioned, paved the way for Barack Obama to become president. Jesse Jackson, in that way, made the democratic process, as Jesse said, more democratic.
AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about the significance, I mean, the inspiration for the next generations. I mean, you had Jackson taking on the large corporations, very comfortable walking into Wall Street demanding proportional representation, not only in voting —
LARRY HAMM: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: — but based on, for example, in media outlets around the country, proportional representations to the population they broadcast to —
LARRY HAMM: That’s right.
AMY GOODMAN: — to have African American reporters there.
LARRY HAMM: Right, right.
AMY GOODMAN: Launched many young Black reporters in the country being hired.
LARRY HAMM: Right. Well, he introduced that principle not only into the political sphere, but into the economic sphere, that Black people, as you said, in the media, should have representation proportional to our presence in the population, should have contracts and business in proportion to our population. That was one of his mantras at that time.
But what amazes me, Amy, looking at the clips you played here this morning, is how prescient, how relevant Jackson’s message was in the ’80s and ’90s to today. I mean, he’s talking basically about the same thing, you know, that we’re living under political tyranny, economic tyranny of Wall Street, the greatest upward distribution of wealth in the history of the country, increasing poverty and unemployment, and we need a fundamental change. And I think those of us who recognize Reverend Jackson’s contributions, the way we continue to honor him is to step up, intensify the struggle for racial and economic justice in this country.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, you ran for various political offices in New Jersey. You were there at the convention. He got — he was the — in 1988, he got the second greatest number of votes —
LARRY HAMM: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: — for the presidential nomination.
LARRY HAMM: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: He famously was there in the crowd in Chicago when Barack Obama had just been elected, and you saw his tear-stained face —
LARRY HAMM: That’s right. That’s right.
AMY GOODMAN: — as he looked up into the crowd.
LARRY HAMM: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: Your final thoughts on Reverend Jesse Jackson?
LARRY HAMM: Well, he was our living link to the civil rights movement, the Black freedom struggle, the Black liberation movement. Jesse Jackson, more than anything else, was audacious. If he had waited around for people to say, “Jesse, you should run for president,” or “Jesse, you should do this,” it probably wouldn’t have happened. Jesse knew his place in history. He knew because of his role in the civil rights movement. And that’s something we should not overlook. As we talk more about the contemporary Jesse Jackson, we need to talk about his role in that movement of blood and fury in the 1960s, the civil rights movement, in which so many lives were taken.
But as I said, the best way that we can honor Jesse Jackson and all the martyrs — we also saw this week, a couple of weeks, the passage of Claudette Colvin — is to get back, step up —
AMY GOODMAN: Claudette Colvin was Rosa Parks before Rosa Parks.
LARRY HAMM: That’s right. That’s right.
AMY GOODMAN: Sat down on the bus and refused to get up.
LARRY HAMM: That’s right. Jesse’s daughter, Santita, spoke at the tribute at Abyssinian Baptist Church last week. I was also there for that. But the best way that we can honor these people is to step up this fight, because Jesse’s life was an arc, and we saw that arc move in the direction of progress. And now the arc swings in the opposite direction of, really, counterrevolution. And now we have to step up and build this movement to fight that.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s end with the Reverend Jesse Jackson in his own words in 2013 at the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington.
REV. JESSE JACKSON: And so, keep dreaming of the constitutional right to vote. Stop the madness in North Carolina and Texas. Keep dreaming. Keep dreaming. Revive the War on Poverty. Keep dreaming, to go from stop-and-frisk to stop-and-employ, stop-and-educate, stop-and-house, stop-and-choose-schools-over-jails. Keep dreaming. Keep dreaming student loan debt forgiveness as a stimulus. Keep dreaming. Revive the U.S. Civil Rights Commission with the conscience of our nation. Keep dreaming. Restore foreclosed housing. Keep dreaming comprehensive immigration reform that includes Africa, Haiti and the Caribbean. Keep dreaming. Fifty years later, we are free but not equal. Keep dreaming. Choose life over death, futures over funerals, and more graduations and less funerals. And so, keep the faith. And through it all, keep hope alive.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s the Reverend Jesse Jackson on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. Reverend Jackson died earlier this morning at the age of 84 at his home, surrounded by family. I want to thank Larry Hamm, civil rights activist, chair of the People’s Organization for Progress, co-chair of the Jackson for President campaign in New Jersey in ’88 and a Jackson delegate in 1988.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we go to Minneapolis to look at ICE and the Justice Department. Two federal immigration officers lied under oath about an attack in Minneapolis involving two Venezuelan immigrants shot by an ICE agent. Stay with us.
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AMY GOODMAN: Sweet Honey in the Rock performing “Down by the Riverside” in our firehouse studio.
