I first encountered Rev. Jesse Jackson in the spring of 1966, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to Chicago to begin, what became, the Campaign for Open Housing, a protest in Chicago’s restrictive covenants. I was a student in the Englewood area and was recruited to join the Movement by a graduate student at the University of Chicago School of Social Work, a white female student.
Housing segregation was rampant, as Black people were confined to deteriorating housing on the South and West Sides of the city. Rev. Jackson and Rev. James Bevel and Rev. Al Sampson, were charged by Dr. King to organize Chicago college students as foot soldiers in the marches that were being planned in white neighborhoods around the city.
Rev. Jackson was a towering presence, both physically and emotionally. A former football star at Southern Illinois University, he towered over the diminutive Dr. King. When King was speaking to supporters inside Stone Temple Church on the West Side, Jesse would be outside talking to us students and the press.
It’s no secret that the demure Dr. King and the flashy Rev. Jesse Jackson often clashed.
The Open Housing marches were no walk in the park, both literally and figuratively. When we bussed to Marquette Park on the Southwest side, Dr. King and Mahalia Jackson were attacked by the angry white mob. Teenaged thugs were throwing rocks at them from the trees. I know, because I was standing within feet of the brutal attack and witnessed it first-hand. In the immediate aftermath, Dr. King told reporters that he had never witnessed such “hostility and hatred” in all his years of protest in Mississippi and Alabama.
I witnessed Rev. Jackson’s rise to prominence as a Civil Rights Leader at Operation PUSH, later the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, which he founded in the Kenwood neighborhood. I covered those rallies, which were broadcast on the local radio station WVON every Saturday afternoon. Celebrities from around the country would come to Rainbow PUSH to listen to his message and to preform, including Roberta Flack, Nancy Wilson, Lou Rawls, among many others. Cannonball Adderley and his brother Nat, debuted their hit single Mercy, Mercy, Mercy at one of the meetings, with the composer, Joe Zawinul, on the piano. The performance later morphed into a Grammy-winning album.
At one point, he would hold private forums for members at the PUSH offices and at his South side home.
In the interim, I became involved in broadcast television as a writer and reporter at local Chicago television stations. From, there, I was recruited to work as an anchor and reporter at KGOTV Channel 7 in San Francisco and later, the Independent News Service. That’s when I encountered Rev. Jackson again, running as a candidate for the Democratic Presidential Nomination at the 1984 Democratic Convention at San Francisco’s Moscone Center.
I experienced a dramatic “full circle” moment there when, as I was crossing the rear corridor of the convention center to get to my camera position during Rev. Jackson’s powerful speech to the convention delegates, I crossed paths once again with the woman who had recruited me to join the movement as a student, the very person who had recruited me to march with Dr. King and Rev. Jackson as a student. I had not seen her since those college days. It was a powerful moment.
Over the ensuing years, I covered Rev. Jackson as a reporter for various outlets, including CLTV, Tribune Broadcasting/WGN. His efforts in Chicago and nationally, were transformative.
Whether it be fighting abusive landlords, campaigning for jobs in industry or the financial sector through the Wall Street Project, (which I went through at the now defunct Oppenheimer company) or elevating the financial mobility of Black people through direct action, his was a powerful voice to the end. His light in this world will be missed.
Dwight Casimere is a Times Weekly Contributor.
