Midway through Black History Month, the country lost a civil rights pioneer and prominent advocate for equal rights and economic justice in the Rev. Jesse Jackson. The two-time presidential hopeful died this week at age 84.
While Chicago-centric with the founding of Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity) in 1971, which later became the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, Jackson was no stranger to Lake County and was familiar with Lake County Black leaders. He made a number of trips to the county in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s to work with local folks on behalf of residents overlooked by those in power, and preaching his “I am somebody” mantra to those who would listen.
Jackson, who first attended the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign before returning to his home in the Deep South during the Jim Crow era, was an icon in the Civil Rights Movement for six decades. He was nearby when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated outside a Memphis, Tennessee, motel on April 4, 1968. Many consider that he kept the Civil Rights crusade alive after King’s death.
He was also instrumental in shaping the future Democratic Party and laid the groundwork for the success of President Barack Obama’s two presidential terms, something the former commander-in-chief has acknowledged. That began during a meeting of party minds in Lake County.
In late summer 1969, a dashiki-clad Jackson was one of the leaders who brought together various factions of the party. The aim was to revitalize followers after the crushing 1968 defeat of the party’s presidential candidate, then Vice President Hubert Humphrey, by former Vice President Richard Nixon.
The thinktank session was held at the rambling 40-acre Mettawa estate of another presidential also-ran, Adlai Stevenson II. The forum at the Stevenson house, which spreads from St. Mary’s Road west to the Des Plaines River, brought a wide coalition of political organizers, civil rights leaders and party workers to the estate, now owned by the Lake County Forest Preserves District, to discuss their next steps.
The key was changing the way delegates to the party’s presidential nominating conventions had been selected in previous election years. Party bosses then were the ones who picked and chose delegates and controlled party functions.
Jackson was one of the leaders who led an unofficial Illinois delegation to the rowdy Democratic National Convention in Chicago in late August 1968 at the old International Amphitheatre. The Jackson group was not seated by convention rules adopted at the urging of then-Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, who controlled the state delegation.
In 1972, the tables were turned on Daley’s hand-picked convention delegation. Ideas spawned at the Stevenson estate went on to reform the way party convention delegates were chosen. At the party’s 1972 convention in Miami in July, the reforms were first implemented.
With the new rules in hand, the convention’s credentials committee rejected the entire Illinois delegation, once again led by Daley, and seated an alternate delegation led by Jackson and Chicago Ald. William Singer. The state delegation was pledged to South Dakota Sen. George McGovern, who, for a short time, was an assistant pastor at the Diamond Lake Methodist Church outside Mundelein.
McGovern went on to lose in a landslide to Nixon in the 1972 presidential election. He won only electoral votes in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.
It was the experiences at the party level that perhaps sparked Jackson’s interest in making his own run for the presidency. Many forget that in 1984, at age 41, he launched a serious run for the presidency. He wouldn’t be the last Black candidate following New York City Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, the first Black major party candidate who had but little backing.
“Run Jesse, Run!” was the catch-phrase for the ’84 campaign, which focused on economic empowerment and advocacy. He lost steam after admitting the use of a slur in a private conversation, characterizing Jewish residents of New York City.
Jackson finished third in convention delegates for the nomination behind former Vice President Walter Mondale, the eventual party standard-bearer, and Colorado Sen. Gary Hart.
He ran for president again in 1988, losing primary battles to then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. Jackson, a firebrand orator who delivered a stirring speech to ’88 delegates, may have made a better candidate against the winner, George H.W. Bush.
After brushes with presidential campaigns, Jackson continued his activism, including being a roving diplomat without portfolio. In 2000, President Bill Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor given in the U.S.
As late as 2021, he was arrested in Washington, D.C., for protesting nationwide voter restrictions pushed by the Republican Party. He formally retired from his role at the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, from which he built a national base, in 2023 due to health reasons.
Jackson’s death leaves a void in Civil Rights activism and needed voting-rights advocacy in these troublesome times. His American legacy will only grow with his passing.
Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor. sellenews@gmail.com. X @sellenews.
