Favorite son: Jesse Jackson

Photo by Marc PoKempner ©1987

They called it the Grapefruit League. Three associates of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, all clergymen themselves, would go to his home on Chicago's south side to play pickup games of basketball. The Rev. Frank Watkins, a former college athlete who signed on with Jackson in 1969 and has been a spokesman for him since 1975, says the exertion of the games was Jackson's kind of relaxation. But they were not nice, friendly encounters. Says Watkins: "It was play all out. . . to win."

Jesse Louis Jackson has been playing all out, to win, for a long time, and often against long odds. And in many ways he has been successful in a classical American way: He has overcome adversity to become a recognized public figure and a household word. But who is Jesse Jackson, and what kind of president would he be?

To those who like him, he is an inspiration, one who can hold a crowd in the palm of his hand, speak of equality and justice, raise self-esteem. He can sway a crowd, and he has avid followers.

To some who have worked with him he is a limelight-grabber who has fed on the work, even the tragedies, of others to continue his road to political stardom.

And in the arena of elective government, he is a mystery. Almost all presidents have come out of successful careers in government, the military or business, said Paul M. Green, political science professor at Governors State University. Jackson has come from none of these. "He's not demonstrated, [not] proven," said Vince Demuzio, a downstate Democrat, state senator and chairman of the Democratic party in Illinois. "He holds no elective office. He's not had to take a vote or take a position on particular pieces of legislation."

Jackson backers obviously disagree. "He's a dreamer and a visionary," says Watkins. "He sees the big picture. He dreams big dreams. On the other hand, he is a very practical person." State Rep. Carol Mosely Braun (D-25, Chicago), a Jackson family friend, neighbor and supporter, said, "Jesse Jackson in many regards represents a bridge from the old politics to the new. The keynote of his whole effort is to say to the American people that we can have nonracist, nonsexist politics."

Just what entails the "new" politics of Jackson? It means equal opportunity, with affirmative action to make up for past injustices. It means a massive commitment to social programs to deal with problems like hunger and health care. It means a cutback in tax breaks to corporations unless they do more for workers, and less defense spending.

At the 1984 Democratic National Convention, Jackson gave what was widely regarded as a tremendous speech. He claimed as his constitutency "the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the despised." He spoke of a "demilitarized" foreign policy and measuring human rights by one yardstick, so America doesn't support labor unions in Poland but oppose them in South Africa. He spoke of cutting defense spending (without cutting defense) and using the money "to build millions of new houses, to build hospitals, to train and pay our teachers and educate our young people, to provide health care" and a number of other social benefits.

The Rev. Hosea Williams was not amused by Jackson's speech, even though he had grudgingly come to work for the candidacy. He has worked with Jackson since the days when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was leading marches in the South and in Washington. And he has felt burned by Jackson more than once.

In San Francisco, Jackson was to receive 465.5 delegate votes on the first ballot, about 11 percent of all delegates, and Williams wanted Jackson to try to win policy or platform concessions with the strength. But not all blacks had been for Jackson. Williams said prominent movement members who had publicly or privately worked against Jackson included Andrew Young, Corretta Scott King and Julian Bond. "I tried to get Jesse to call a unity meeting," said Williams, who is a city councilman in Atlanta. "I said, 'Jesse, for the benefit of black people, we've got to . . . go to the convention unified.' Jesse told me he was not going to try to unite with anyone that didn't support his candidacy."

The result, according to Williams? "The National Democratic Convention was not willing to make any concessions to black people. They made concessions to Jews, they made concessions to Spanish-speaking Americans, they made concessions to women. But the only concession they made to blacks was to allow Jesse Jackson to speak for one hour on national television."

Williams had overcome some bad feelings to work for Jackson. They grew out of experiences that have haunted Jackson during his whole public life. One concerned the minutes and days following the assassination of King at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis in 1968. More than 100 articles, including ones

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in Playboy and Time, carried the story that Jackson had cradled King in his arms shortly after the shooting, according to Jesse Jackson: The Man, the Movement, the Myth, a 1975 book by Barbara Reynolds, then a Chicago newspaper reporter. But others who were there said Jackson made up the story.

Five days before, in a Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) executive committee meeting, Jackson had been challenging King's ideas, leading King to get upset and tell him, according to Williams: "Jesse, if you want to start your own organization, you don't have to destroy mine in the interim."

Recounting the day of the shooting, Williams said that "once they said that Dr. King was pronounced dead, then Jesse was out in the courtyard with several press persons. I heard him say, 'I was the last man in the world that spoke to him,' and I knew that was not true." The next morning he was in Chicago, being interviewed on national TV, wearing a blood-stained shirt. The impression was clearly that Jackson, one of several blacks who had been in the shadow of King, held some special place as his heir. Watkins says Jackson never made untrue claims and never himself spread the myth about cradling King. Don Rose, a Chicago activist who had done publicity and strategy work for civil rights leaders, has been quoted as saying he met with Jackson after King's death, claiming that "it was decided that Jackson could be sold to the press as the new King."

To paraphrase Williams' views of Jackson, the candidate has shown more than once that he is all flash, no cash. He takes credit for ongoing movements, but does not offer alternatives. And to use King's death as a springboard, given King's stature as the leader of black America at the time, was particularly distasteful to Williams.

Within two months after King's death, the SCLC erected "Resurrection City" in Washington, D.C., a home to 7,000 poor people of all races. Williams and Jackson were competitors to be named mayor. Then Bobby Kennedy was shot. In the aftermath, Williams says, he decided not to fight, and Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy, who took over control of SCLC from King, appointed Jackson "mayor." "The city went to pot under Jesse," Williams says. A Chicago activist, Al Raby, also remembers an instance when Jackson spoke out of turn, getting personal exposure at the expense of solid policy. Raby was with the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO) and had invited King to help demonstrate. They marched for open housing, but the Chicago of Mayor Richard J. Daley proved a harsh one. In the Gage Park neighborhood, King was hit on the head by a rock as angry whites shouted epithets. The shock to CCCO leaders was seeing in the press that the group planned to march on the hostile white enclave of Cicero. The announcement was made by Jackson and made it awkward to back down. It was embarrassing.

"Jesse Jackson has been probably more successful in getting media attention than anybody I know," Raby said. "And he's probably stepped across the line on occasion in seeking that attention. " Raby is backing Bruce Babbitt for president in 1988. He says it's not a slam at Jackson but a realization that a black won't be elected. But Raby is conciliatory in his views on Jackson, whom he has not worked with in more than a decade. "I get the impression from a distance that he's grown a great deal," he says.

While politically challenging the assertion that a black can't be elected president and almost daring audiences in places like Iowa to show that America isn't that backward, Jackson is very conscious of his roots in the then-segregated South. "In his view, racism has become institutionalized into virtually every aspect of American life," wrote Watkins and Roger D. Hatch in the editors' introduction to Jackson's 1987 compilation of speeches and writings, Straight from the Heart.

Obstacles even beyond those of other black children awaited Jackson when he was born in Greenville, S.C., on October 8, 1941. Because his mother, Helen Burns, was in high school and not married, she was ousted for a time from the Springfield Baptist Church by the congregation. Other children yelled taunts of "Jesse ain't got no daddy" when he was young, according to Thunder in America: The Improbable Presidential Campaign of Jesse Jackson by Bob Faw and the late Nancy Skelton, two reporters who covered his 1984 campaign. Charles Henry Jackson, who later married Jackson's mother, adopted Jesse when he was 15.

Jackson lived for several years in a house with no indoor plumbing. White fans at Furman University basektball games called him "nigger" and tried to swindle him as he sold them peanuts and Coca Cola. A white store owner once pointed a gun to Jackson's head in response to a whistle for service when he was 8. But his grandmother, Matilda Burns, would instill in him the desire to do good. "For God's sake, Jesse, promise me you'll be somebody," she would say. His chants of "I am somebody!" years later would electrify audiences and become part of the repertoire of Jackson the legendary speaker.

Jackson has played up his battle against racism in his public pronouncements, and sometimes he has admitted exaggeration. He may have rebelled against the back-of-the-bus South by spitting in food of haughty white customers at a Greenville hotel where he worked. At least two books mention it, but Watkins says Jackson once told that story to be "macho" and now says it isn't true.

Jackson's exit from the University of Illinois, where he went on a football scholarship after being the quarterback and winning "best athlete" honors at all-black Sterling High School, has also recently been surrounded by controversey. Jackson has long claimed that racial prejudice effectively blocked him from playing quarterback at the U of I, making him decide to transfer to North Carolina A & T in Greensboro. But the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette has said Jackson left after being caught plagiarizing a paper, and they interviewed a woman who said she typed the paper for Jackson. One former student who said he remembered the incident was Mel Meyers, who is black and played quarterback. Jackson says he doesn't remember the plagiarism incident or the woman.

Jackson began to make a name for himself in the Civil Rights movement at Greensboro. Virginia McKee, then a secretary to the president and now assistant to the chancellor at the college, recalls Jackson, who played quarterback and became student president, leading marches to the downtown square. "He was the leader along with some of the ministers here," she recalled recently. "He showed exceptional leadership ability while he was in school." She said he was a "tough negotiator" but would

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try to work out differences with businesses before marching. "He was not so adamant that he would not bend or give," she said.

Capt. William Jackson of the Greensboro police was in charge of crowd control. He would visit Jackson when he heard a march was brewing and let the student leader know that blocking traffic would be illegal. "He'd tell me, 'Well, I'm sorry it's unlawful, but I'll have to do it,'" Capt. Jackson said. "I'd tell him, 'If you do, then I'm going to have to arrest you.' He was as good as his word, and I was as good as mine." His memories of the future presidential candidate are of somebody with "the ability to create followers" and to give speeches that were "hypnotic" to some. "I think through his. . . cooperativeness, our town did not erupt," said Capt. Jackson.

Jesse Jackson partisans also say that he is a good compromiser who works well behind the scenes. "Because of his Baptist preacher style, his fiery oratory, that's the image [people have] of Rev. Jackson," said the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago, who has known Jackson since 1968. "He's much more open to dialogue than people would imagine."

Wright presents a view of Jackson at the 1984 convention that contrasts with that of Hosea Williams. Wright says he sat and talked to Jackson for three relaxed hours at a ministers' conference last June in Hampton, Va. "I personally was taken aback at how little self was in it," Wright said. He recalls Jackson being "really caught up in a cause" and saying: "More than the fact that I didn't get the nomination, what hurts is [that] nothing I was saying got taken seriously in the platforms."

Perhaps Jackson's greatest concrete accomplisments have been in economic agreements for blacks. "Our fair share must be the new criterion and standard," Jackson said in 1982, announcing a covenant with Heublein, owner of Kentucky Fried Chicken, which called for, among other things, a $10 million program to help blacks take control of at least 24 franchises. "The black community needs. . . investment for business and community development, not a paternalistic raltionship."

Through his control of operation Breadbasket, a Chicago off­shoot of the SCLC, and of his own Operation PUSH (People United to Save — later Serve — Humanity), he would use or threaten economic boycotts to reach "covenants" with large companies. The agreements helped spread economic benefits to minorities.

He has also preached that blacks should patronize black businesses and banks, and he helped force white-owned corporations to purchase goods from minority firms. "It's no accident that Chicago is considered the center of black business," Watkins said.

When Jackson allies are asked about his never having held public office, the reply is often to recount his foreign travels. He has visited dozens of foreign leaders, gaining worldly experience but garnering mixed reviews. He scored a coup in many circles by gaining release of downed Air Force Lt. Robert Goodman Jr. from Syria in January 1983 but brought on criticism at home by visits to Yassir Arafat in 1979 and Fidel Castro in 1984. Watkins defends visits even to unpopular or anti-American leaders: "The only way you can make peace is with your enemies."

But U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde (R-6, Bensenville), a conservative Republican not likely to support any Democrat for president (he is backing Jack Kemp), says that Jackson's dealings with foreign leaders have been naive. "I think you should always continue to talk, but I think you have to be careful that you don't offend other sensibilities," Hyde said. "When he talks to Castro, he ought to talk some hard truth to him — why does he have 30,000 troops over in Angola? Why is he a Soviet client state? If he's going to talk to Arafat, he ought to ask him why the hell he is such a terrorist. I think he is giving them a legitimacy and a moral equivalency [to] the free countries of the world that is undeserved."

Jackson has been dogged by questions about finances since Operation Breadbasket days when newspapers questioned where funds went from annual Black Expo conventions. Jackson has never been charged with any wrongdoing, and his friends say that organizations that help the poor naturally are low on money. Watkins says, "It's no secret that Jackson has never characterized himself as an administrator," but a president does not have to be because he hires on people to carry out programs. "All a president does is make policy judgments, choose priorities, set the moral tone, articulate a vision, communicate," Watkins said.

Hosea Williams puts his view of Jackson's administrative ability plainly: "Jesse's never been a great initiator. I think that's one of his great weaknesses as a leader. Jesse established PUSH chapters in almost every major city in America, and as soon as Jesse left, those PUSH chapters failed." He speculated that Jackson set up his National Rainbow Coalition to avoid further scrutiny of PUSH finances.

Jesse Jackson as president would certainly be the Great Communicator II, but his message would be decidedly different than Reagan. At a recent PUSH meeting, Jackson railed against General Electric for exporting jobs and making $6 billion between 1981 and 1983, and for paying no taxes and getting a rebate "while folk on unemployment compensation paid taxes." "That's why you need Jesse Jackson as president," he said. He would try to redistribute wealth and reflect the concerns of his Rainbow Coalition — the poor and jobless, those in transition, the elderly. But if what some say about him is true, he would accomplish these in the Reagan style of setting policy and leaving details to others.

Jackson no longer needs to upstage anyone to get media attention. He is the single most identifiable black leader in the country and has won the forum to get his message across.

America may not be ready for a black president, but Jackson does not publicly admit that. He challenges voters to show they are not turned off by his color. His campaign style is electrifying, and Paul Green says he could enter the convention with 1,000 committed delegates. That could give him considerable leverage. The way the final form of the 1988 Democratic platform serves the "damned, the disinherited, the disrespected and the despised" will show how Jesse Jackson has decided to use his power.□

Bernard Schoenburg is a former member of the Statehouse press corps now working as a reporter in Chicago.

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