Barack And Michelle Obama Pay Heartfelt Tribute To The Late Jesse Jackson
Without Jesse Jackson's 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns, Barack Obama may have never gotten to the White House, so when Jackson passed away, it was the Obamas who delivered an important tribute.
Jesse Jackson’s life was spent advocating for civil rights and forgotten and unseen Americans. More than 40 years after his first presidential campaign, many people have forgotten how truly groundbreaking Jackson’s campaigns were in American politics.
It was so much more than a black man collecting millions of votes in a Democratic presidential primary. 3.3 million Democrats cast their ballots for Jackson in 1984, and Jackson more than doubled that number to 6.9 million in 1988.
Jackson spoke for and saw Americans that the country had forgotten in Ronald Reagan’s America, and those same people are being forgotten in Donald Trump’s America forty years later.
During his 1988 Democratic convention speech, Jackson closed by saying:
Every one of these funny labels they put on you, those of you who are watching this broadcast tonight in the projects, on the corners, I understand. Call you outcast, low down, you can’t make it, you’re nothing, you’re from nobody, subclass, underclass; when you see Jesse Jackson, when my name goes in nomination, your name goes in nomination.
I was born in the slum, but the slum was not born in me. And it wasn’t born in you, and you can make it.
Wherever you are tonight, you can make it. Hold your head high, stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes, but the morning comes. Don’t you surrender. Suffering breeds character, character breeds faith. In the end faith will not disappoint.
You must not surrender. You may or may not get there but just know that you’re qualified. And you hold on, and hold out. We must never surrender. America will get better and better.
Watch Jackson’s 1988 convention speech:
In the era when the mantra greed is good was born, Jesse Jackson was talking to people who weren’t at the top.
Twenty years before there was hope and change, Jesse Jackson was telling America to keep hope alive.
It is that foundation that the Obamas built upon that the former president and first lady honored.
