Talking intently, oblivious to the boisterous convention chatter around them, Rev. Jesse Jackson and his wife, Jacqueline, huddle over soft drinks in the lobby of the Sheraton International at O`Hare.
Around them, the 16th annual conclave of PUSH (People United to Serve Humanity), which Jesse Jackson founded, is winding down.
Only days before, Jackie, 43, returned from a trip to the Soviet Union as a U.S. delegate to the World Congress of Women. Her husband, 45, is less than an hour from takeoff to Houston for a nationally televised politicial debate of those running for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination. In the midst of the crowd and two hectic schedules, the couple is stealing a few moments together.
Not yet a declared presidential candidate, Jesse Jackson nevertheless looks and acts like one. Right now he is the front-runner in a crowded field. The woman with whom he is locked in animated conversation could be the next First Lady of the United States.
Slightly over 5 feet tall with feline grace and vigorous charm, Jackie Jackson is the person Jesse Jackson calls ”my best and most loyal critic.”
She has been ”pivotal” in the Jackson family, says Santita, 23, the oldest of the five children. She is regarded by many as the First Lady of black America.
Little known to much of the American public despite her husband`s very public career, Jackie Jackson stepped forward into the spotlight after witnessing the press scrutiny of former front-runner Gary Hart`s private life. Very much in keeping with those who describe her as ”strong,”
”opinionated,” ”exciting,” she put the press on notice that she will not tolerate such prying into her family`s life.
”I don`t believe in examining sheets,” she told Life magazine. ”That`s a violation of privacy. If my husband has committed adultery, he better not tell me. And you better not go digging into it, because I`m trying to raise a family and I won`t let you be the one to destroy my family.”
Later, sitting in a wingback chair in her Hyde Park living room, she explains: ”As a very conservative person coming out of a conservative household, certain things go against my teachings.
”I have problems with reporters who would ask intimate questions about me and my husband . . . you know there`s a level of vulgarity there.”
Leaning forward in earnestness, she sips her coffee. She is wearing a white cotton jumpsuit. She is barefoot, wears no makeup; sometimes she uses a wire retainer to slow movement of shifting teeth. Like a dancer, she uses her slender hands to punctuate her conversation.
She is surrounded by an eclectic array of possessions and pictures accumulated during the 17 years the Jacksons have lived in this large, gray stone house on South Constance Avenue.
The dark wood-paneled living room has a comfortable quality. A baby grand piano topped with picture frames dominates one side. Graduation and family pictures cover the walls. From the kitchen, 16-year-old Yusef, the Jacksons`
youngest son, asks, ”Has the dog been fed? Did Mom feed the dog?”
Only the number of telephone calls and the buttons on a telephone carelessly left in the middle of the living room floor are clues that this family may be different from others.
Yusef, a student at St. Albans, a private prep school in Washington, and his sister Jacqueline, 11, who has been attending Marva Collins` Westside Preparatory School, are the only two children home for the summer. Santita, an honors graduate of Whitney Young High School, was a pre-med student at Howard University during the school year. This summer she is working as an intern in the Washington office of Rep. Gus Savage. Jesse Jr., 22, and Jonathan, 21, are in summer school at their parents` alma mater, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro.
COLLEGE SWEETHEARTS
The Jacksons will celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary in December. They met at A&T after Jesse transferred to the school from the University of Illinois. He had, according to Barbara Reynolds in her book ”Jesse Jackson:
America`s David” (JFJ Associates, $11.95), been impressive enough as a high school quarterback in North Carolina to win a U. of I. football scholarship. He transferred to A&T after being informed that black men do not play quarterback in the Big Ten, Reynolds reported.
Born to Florida sharecroppers, Jackie grew up in Newport News, Va. She was a college freshman when she met Jesse, who remembers being impressed because ”she was extraordinarily bright” and keenly interested in world affairs. Both were strongly committed to the then-burgeoning civil rights movement. They married in Jackie`s sophomore year and moved to Chicago more than 20 years ago when Jackson entered Chicago Theological Seminary.
The couple is a study in contrasts. Jesse, who is taller than 6 feet, towers over his wife. Jackie smokes, though not in front of her husband, and drinks coffee, which her husband does not.
”My mother is more gregarious than my father,” says Santita. ”He tends to be quiet, but she has a way of making him laugh.” He currently favors dark business suits and executive dressing. His wife, always feminine, seldom tailored, tends to select according to mood–one day wearing designer Nancy Heller, another day choosing ”loose and flowing” in a Third World mode.
There are hints that the life they have chosen has not always been easy. Jackie arises most mornings at 5 for some quiet time to think, read and take care of bills before the phone starts ringing.
Married to a man with the charm and charisma of a movie star, she has had two decades to learn to deal with speculation about his constant travels.
”She`s enduring,” observes Reynolds, Jesse Jackson`s biographer and an editor for USA Today. ”Through it all she`s grown and matured with a lot of grace.”
RESPECT, NOT GUSHING
It is a marriage that appears strongly rooted in shared goals and mutual respect, and not in gushing public admiration. Recalling a photographer`s request that she gaze adoringly into her husband`s eyes, Jackie demands to know, ”How do people do that without looking phony? In private, my husband and I laughed and joked, `This will take some practice.` ”
”We have defined roles,” says Jesse about his marriage. ”We have a shared covenant and we give each other room to grow. . . . Our relationship is not based on equality. Our relationship is based on adequacy. It`s not tit for tat. It`s what`s required to make it work.”
”We`re not prisoners,” Jackie declares. ”We`re married. We`re living in the 21st Century, really, so you can`t be home by 5 p.m. That`s a little difficult for us.”
Both are devoted to building a solid family. Jackie, all agree, has been the primary on-site parent by choice. She clearly is uncomfortable, however, with the public perception of her much-traveled husband as absentee parent and the resulting assumption she must be a closeted wife.
She travels too, she notes, for speaking engagements and business. She is overseeing renovation of a house in Washington. She has been the first Jackson to visit the Middle East, Nicaragua and the Soviet Union. She led a fact-finding tour to Ethiopia.
She talks with her husband daily, often more than once, and acts as intermediary for many of the requests for his speaking engagements. When it can be arranged, the children travel with their father.
STRICTNESS AND LOVE
Jackie calls herself a strict mother.
”My children grew up with nothing but rules,” she laughs. But it was a firm grip tempered with lots of love. Each child had household chores. Each had to listen dutifully to Jackie`s stream of sayings. ”She always encouraged an independent spirit,” says Santita.
And Jackie`s commitment to children extends beyond her own house.
The role she would take as First Lady ”would have to reflect my concerns for the family institution in America,” she says, ”because I understand that in every civilized society the center of that civilized community has been the family.”
She is concerned about what she sees as erosion in traditional family life and values. She is appalled by the amount of sex in the media. She worries about the power of the news media to invade privacy.
How much Jackie affects her husband`s opinions is known only to the couple themselves. On political matters, Jackie is among a collection of people her husband respects and listens to before making a policy decision.
On a more personal level, she admits, ”I can have an opinion and he can have one. I kind of enjoy that. I`m not an android and he`s not one either. I could be married to him because I agree with him 75 percent of the time. And he can be married to me because he agrees with me . . . uh, well . . maybe 50 percent.”
TALKING–AND LISTENING
Although she lists crocheting, embroidering, quilting and reading as her chief sources of relaxation, Jackie seems to enjoy nothing better than a spirited discussion. An aide, Allene Walker, suggests Jackie`s real relaxation is ”talking. She likes nothing better than to sit down in her back yard and have a one-on-one.”
Her enthusiasm for an open exchange of views has proved valuable in her travels. Reynolds suggests Jackie is quite astute in dealing with people. Walker calls Jackie very ”intuitive.” Jesse Jackson credits her with having ”a third ear. She has a discerning ear and is very sensitive.”
As a black woman, Jackie, perhaps more than other candidates` wives, is empathetic to the Third World. ”The world is no longer white,” she observes, ”and Americans are the last to discover it.”
Women, she suggests, are a true reflection of society. She often identifies herself with women of the Third World–women she sees as doers, survivors, not complainers and weepers.
”I`d work for women and give them some opportunity,” she says, if she found herself living at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. ”I`d want to use the position to work to rebuild the American family with attention to children and for peace.” And she promises, with a husky laugh, ”I`d be very exciting.” —
