Rev. Jesse Jackson was once the golden child of black American politics, seen by many African-Americans in the 1970s and 80s as the heir to the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders of the 1960s, having been appointed by King himself to run the Chicago chapter of Operation Breadbasket for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Jackson survived the whispers that he embellished his story of cradling the bloodied King in his arms on the day of his assassination. He became the second African-American to mount a major campaign for president after Shirley Chisholm.
Jackson’s two runs for the White House inspired millions of black children and adults, who cried “run Jesse, run!” and “win Jesse, win!” as the Rainbow/PUSH founder won an unexpected 450 delegates in 1984, along with 18 percent of the popular Democratic primary vote and a third place finish behind Vice President Walt Mondale and Sen. Gary Hart). He followed that by winning 1200 delegates, doubling his popular vote to 7 million and racking up victories in 11 primaries and caucuses in 1988.
And though Jackson never succeeded in achieving a political office for himself, his son, Jesse Jr., achieved the kind of temporal power that eluded even the King children, getting elected to Congress from Illinois in 1996. When then-Illinois Senator Barack Obama was elected president, Jackson — a national co-chair of Obama’s campaign — was a natural addition to the short list to succeed him.
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But through a dramatic turns of events, the Jacksons are at their weakness point politically in decades, and it’s not clear the iconic family will ever recover. Jesse Jr. is resigning from Congress, citing depression but with the potential of a criminal indictment hovering over him. His political career, once expected to include a tenure as mayor of Chicago or perhaps even U.S. senator or president, appears over.
No member of the Jackson clan is likely to run to replace him in Congress. Jesse Sr., once one of the most-sought out figures in Democratic politics, has only a fraction of his former influence. African-Americans look to President Obama for leadership, activists now view the Rev. Al Sharpton as a more important leader, and even in Chicago, Jackson’s presence has waned.
This decline did not come suddenly, as Jackson, Sr. has long faced controversy. During his second presidential run, he refused to sever his support for Louis Farrakhan and came under fire for referring to New York as “Hymietown” (an “off-the-record” comment to a reporter for which he later publicly asked for forgiveness). In the ensuing years, some in the black community questioned whether his anti-corporate activism financially benefited his relatives. And there was the scandal in 2001, in which the reverend admitted fathering a daughter outside his marriage three years earlier.
These days, Jackson, Sr.’s legacy is even more clouded. His offensive comments about then presidential candidate Barack Obama resonated across black America. And like anti-Obama commentators Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, Jackson has failed to gain a seat at the White House table, while the man considered to be both his chief heir to the mantle of civil rights leadership and his main rival, Sharpton, has gained both media prominence as a prime-time host on MSNBC and coveted White House access.
Jackson has sometimes seemed to struggle for relevancy, while Sharpton’s National Action Network has been at the forefront of events, like the Trayvon Martin case, that have galvanized black America.
Both men have been constantly denounced by conservatives as masterful exploiters of racial resentment, but it is Sharpton who has turned the corner of public opinion, emerging as a popular mainstream voice, particularly among supporters of President Obama, of all races.
And for Jackson, while there have been successes, there have also been odd moments: like his recent praise of Fox News honcho Roger Ailes, who Jackson called “a tough-minded, caring individual,” who is “preparing leaders for the diverse world in which we live.” Jackson made the remarks at a ceremony marking Ailes’ news apprenticeship program, and Ailes told reporters at the same event that he has “kept up a back-channel” to Jackson for years.
It’s the kind of proximity that could raise eyebrows among black Americans, many of whom view Ailes’ Fox News Network as the home of relentlessly anti-Obama commentary.
Yet, the Jackson-Ailes embrace attracted little attention from the black commentariat, including from Smiley and West, who have been unsparing in their criticism of other prominent black figures, including Sharpton, fellow MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry, and Professor Michael Eric Dyson, whom the duo have derided as “sell-outs” for their close proximity to the White House.
Jackson, meanwhile, has nurtured media-political access for decades. He hosted a cable show, Both Sides with Jesse Jackson, on CNN from 1992 to 2000, and in late 1997 accepted a post as President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s “Special Envoy of the President and Secretary of State for the Promotion of Democracy in Africa.”
Now, as his son reportedly is attempting to negotiate a plea deal in a federal investigation into his finances, while battling clinical depression, which the congressman cited as the cause of his months-long absence from Washington before finally resigning his seat this month, Jackson Sr. has become the family’s chief spokesman, fending off questions and rumors — about plans to shift Jesse Jr’s wife into the seat, an extramarital affair, and the probe into alleged misuse of campaign funds.
Jackson Jr.’s name surfaced in the U.S. Senate bribery scandal that brought down former governor Rod Blagojevich, but the current probe is thought to be unrelated, though Jackson Sr. also was forced to fend off allegations that he was an “emissary” in a scheme to trade a million-dollar fundraising bonanza for a U.S. Senate appointment for Jesse Jr. The reverend denied the allegations. And though the Blagojevich scandal eventually began to fade away, with it went any talk of Jackson Jr. earning the coveted title of Chicago mayor, a seat won by Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.
Under the intensity of the negative spotlight, it’s hard to imagine the Jacksons regaining national prominence in the way a young Jesse did more than 30 years ago, when his rhyming exhortations to young black Americans to be proud of themselves, and to picture someone who looked like them in the White House, were priceless pieces of Dr. King’s dream.
The dream of a black president has been realized, by Obama, and it can sometimes seem unclear where Jackson and other leaders of his era fit in.
Perhaps as he tends to family business, Jackson can find a way to be central the national conversation again, and to restore what has been among the most important black family pedigrees.
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