WASHINGTON – For many young adults, Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.’s historic 1984 bid for the White House may or may not be something they learned about in school. And while they have been taught to revere the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights movement’s most iconic hero, President Obama is to them the person who has broken the greatest political barriers.
But as a group of supporters, educators and political observers gathered at a Monday morning forum to celebrate Jackson’s legacy on the campus of Georgetown University observed several times, without Jackson in 1984, there would not have been an Obama in 2004. The event was hosted by sociology professor Michael Eric Dyson and featured remarks by Rev. Al Sharpton, Rev. Marcia Dyson, Lehigh University’s Dr. James Peterson, and Gary Flowers, who heads the Executive Leadership Forum.
“People often look at the results instead of the people who made them possible,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, who delivered an impassioned speech about Jackson’s influence on his own political awakening and how the civil rights leader fought to level the playing field for African-Americans and other minorities in a variety of areas outside of politics, from main street to Wall Street.
According to Sharpton, a lot of effort was required to maintain hard-won victories, such as the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, fair housing laws and other legislation that King and others had fought so hard—and, in some cases, lost their lives—for. There was always a chance, he said, that lawmakers might try to reverse those decisions but didn’t because people like Jackson backed them down.
Before Jackson made the decision to run for president, he tried to get people such as former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young and Detroit Mayor Coleman Young to make the bid for the White House. But when they declined, he decided to run for office himself, angering others because he did what they wouldn’t.
Sharpton also hailed Jackson for founding the Rainbow-PUSH Coalition.
“That sounds easy in 2011, but in 1984-88, it was heresy to Black preachers to have a coalition with gays and lesbians and unthinkable to White progressives that Blacks were going to sit at the table and decide what the left’s strategy was going to be,” Sharpton said.
