King was slumped against the rail of the balcony. His close
friend Ralph Abernathy was beside him crying "Martin,
Martin, it's going to be all right," but Jackson remembers
thinking he was clearly dead on impact. Jackson took what
felt like a "long, long, walk" to his room just next door and
called King's wife, Coretta. "I told her Dr King had been
shot, I think in the shoulder, and she should come over
straight away. I didn't have the strength to tell her what I
thought I had seen."
Those few moments, 40 years ago tomorrow, are carved
not only into Jackson's memory but into the collective
narrative of America. They certainly changed his life,
driving an already keen activist, then 26, deeply and
irreversibly into the pursuit of racial justice. "It put on us a
burden not to stop, to say we must not allow one bullet to
kill a whole movement," he says now. But in a wider sense
they changed everyone else's reality too. They were what
he calls "a defining moment in American history".
Jackson was on stage with King in the Mason Temple in
Memphis the night before he was assassinated, when King
made his famous "mountaintop" speech. King talked with
almost uncanny premonition about the "threats out there"
and what might happen to him at the hands of "some of our
sick white brothers".
"It doesn't matter with me now," King concluded in words
that will forever reverberate, "because I've been to the
mountaintop ... And I've looked over. And I've seen the
promised land."
Forty years on, Jesse Jackson is still weighing up how far
up the mountain African Americans have ascended. That
question is rapidly becoming a central debate within the
Democratic party's search for a presidential nomination.
Barack Obama, responding to sniping from his rival
Hillary Clinton over his relationship with the outspoken
pastor the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, put race center
stage in the election in a speech in which he positioned his
campaign in a continuum that stretched back through the
civil rights era of King to the fight against slavery. "We set
forth at the beginning of this campaign to continue the
long march of those who came before us, a march for a
more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more
prosperous America."
As someone who has stood at the front of that march for
four decades, Jackson believes that there remains some
way to go. Politically, he says, African Americans have
come a long way. In 1965 there were about 300 black
elected politicians in America; now there are some 10,000.
He sees a substantial step forward too in other areas of
public life, notably entertainment and athletics. "Take the
Super Bowl between the [New York] Giants and the [New
England] Patriots. Millions of people watched the game and
race never came up. It was the red team versus the blue
team. That has detoxified racial relations."
friend Ralph Abernathy was beside him crying "Martin,
Martin, it's going to be all right," but Jackson remembers
thinking he was clearly dead on impact. Jackson took what
felt like a "long, long, walk" to his room just next door and
called King's wife, Coretta. "I told her Dr King had been
shot, I think in the shoulder, and she should come over
straight away. I didn't have the strength to tell her what I
thought I had seen."
Those few moments, 40 years ago tomorrow, are carved
not only into Jackson's memory but into the collective
narrative of America. They certainly changed his life,
driving an already keen activist, then 26, deeply and
irreversibly into the pursuit of racial justice. "It put on us a
burden not to stop, to say we must not allow one bullet to
kill a whole movement," he says now. But in a wider sense
they changed everyone else's reality too. They were what
he calls "a defining moment in American history".
Jackson was on stage with King in the Mason Temple in
Memphis the night before he was assassinated, when King
made his famous "mountaintop" speech. King talked with
almost uncanny premonition about the "threats out there"
and what might happen to him at the hands of "some of our
sick white brothers".
"It doesn't matter with me now," King concluded in words
that will forever reverberate, "because I've been to the
mountaintop ... And I've looked over. And I've seen the
promised land."
Forty years on, Jesse Jackson is still weighing up how far
up the mountain African Americans have ascended. That
question is rapidly becoming a central debate within the
Democratic party's search for a presidential nomination.
Barack Obama, responding to sniping from his rival
Hillary Clinton over his relationship with the outspoken
pastor the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, put race center
stage in the election in a speech in which he positioned his
campaign in a continuum that stretched back through the
civil rights era of King to the fight against slavery. "We set
forth at the beginning of this campaign to continue the
long march of those who came before us, a march for a
more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more
prosperous America."
As someone who has stood at the front of that march for
four decades, Jackson believes that there remains some
way to go. Politically, he says, African Americans have
come a long way. In 1965 there were about 300 black
elected politicians in America; now there are some 10,000.
He sees a substantial step forward too in other areas of
public life, notably entertainment and athletics. "Take the
Super Bowl between the [New York] Giants and the [New
England] Patriots. Millions of people watched the game and
race never came up. It was the red team versus the blue
team. That has detoxified racial relations."
Obama-mania has been setting in throughout the country. Millions across
America are rooting for the Illinois Senator as he campaigns to become our
next Commander in Chief. At EEW Magazine, we’re officially throwing our
hat in the ring, and joining the effort to help Barack Obama become the first
Black President of the United States of America.
America are rooting for the Illinois Senator as he campaigns to become our
next Commander in Chief. At EEW Magazine, we’re officially throwing our
hat in the ring, and joining the effort to help Barack Obama become the first
Black President of the United States of America.
The leader of the civil rights movement and his young
apprentice were preparing to go to dinner with a local pastor,
and King admonished Jackson for not wearing a tie.
"I said to him: 'You know, Dr King, the requisite for dinner is an
appetite, not a tie.' And he laughed at that." Then King turned to
Ben Branch, a musician standing next to Jackson, and asked
him to perform his favorite song at a rally later that night:
"Make sure you play Take My Hand, Precious Lord. Play it real
pretty."
Those were his final words.
The shot rang out a second later.
"Next thing I heard," says Jackson, "someone was saying 'Get
low! Get low!' The police were coming towards us with guns
drawn. I remember crawling to the steps. There was blood
everywhere, and a photographer scooped up a cup of it. It was
eerie."
Then the civil rights movement led by King began the process
that would remove cultural impediments to black progress.
But the issue with which he had only begun to grapple at the
time of his death - economic inequalities experienced by black as
well as white working-class communities - remains a festering
sore.
apprentice were preparing to go to dinner with a local pastor,
and King admonished Jackson for not wearing a tie.
"I said to him: 'You know, Dr King, the requisite for dinner is an
appetite, not a tie.' And he laughed at that." Then King turned to
Ben Branch, a musician standing next to Jackson, and asked
him to perform his favorite song at a rally later that night:
"Make sure you play Take My Hand, Precious Lord. Play it real
pretty."
Those were his final words.
The shot rang out a second later.
"Next thing I heard," says Jackson, "someone was saying 'Get
low! Get low!' The police were coming towards us with guns
drawn. I remember crawling to the steps. There was blood
everywhere, and a photographer scooped up a cup of it. It was
eerie."
Then the civil rights movement led by King began the process
that would remove cultural impediments to black progress.
But the issue with which he had only begun to grapple at the
time of his death - economic inequalities experienced by black as
well as white working-class communities - remains a festering
sore.
40 Years Later: A New King?
Jesse Jackson has no difficulty remembering his last conversation with Martin Luther King. He was in the car park of
the Lorraine motel in Memphis and King was standing a floor above him on the balcony outside room 306.
Jesse Jackson has no difficulty remembering his last conversation with Martin Luther King. He was in the car park of
the Lorraine motel in Memphis and King was standing a floor above him on the balcony outside room 306.
"Yes, blacks have been elected to political office, but the
economic problems that King had started to turn to are still
there. The result is you get black mayors presiding over the
worst inner-cities in America, where jobs are leaving,
investment is leaving, guns and drugs are coming; where
there are first-class jails and second-class schools."
But there are several headline figures that tell a very
different story. A quarter of African Americans live in
poverty, compared with 8% of whites; seven out of 10 black
boys drop out before finishing high school; in several states
such as New Jersey black children are 60 times more likely to
be expelled from school than whites; there are more black
men in jail than in college; and the most shocking statistic: on
average black men die more than six years earlier than their
white equivalents.
"People of color have higher infant mortality rates, shorter
life expectancy, greater unemployment, less education. We
pay more for less. That is our characteristic 40 years later."
Jackson has an explanation for this piercing disparity
between the advancement of black people in many areas of
public life coupled with stagnation or even deterioration in
their overall standards of living. He points out that the legal
underpinning of Jim Crow segregation in the South was
negated in a series of landmark legal actions starting in 1954.
economic problems that King had started to turn to are still
there. The result is you get black mayors presiding over the
worst inner-cities in America, where jobs are leaving,
investment is leaving, guns and drugs are coming; where
there are first-class jails and second-class schools."
But there are several headline figures that tell a very
different story. A quarter of African Americans live in
poverty, compared with 8% of whites; seven out of 10 black
boys drop out before finishing high school; in several states
such as New Jersey black children are 60 times more likely to
be expelled from school than whites; there are more black
men in jail than in college; and the most shocking statistic: on
average black men die more than six years earlier than their
white equivalents.
"People of color have higher infant mortality rates, shorter
life expectancy, greater unemployment, less education. We
pay more for less. That is our characteristic 40 years later."
Jackson has an explanation for this piercing disparity
between the advancement of black people in many areas of
public life coupled with stagnation or even deterioration in
their overall standards of living. He points out that the legal
underpinning of Jim Crow segregation in the South was
negated in a series of landmark legal actions starting in 1954.
"When I see men voting for a woman and whites voting for a
black in great numbers, that is a rebirth for America."
He singles out the recent primary in Mississippi, a state made
notorious by a succession of murders of civil rights activists.
"This was where Emmett Till was killed, Medgar Evers was
killed, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner
were all killed. And now Mississippi holds a national
Democratic primary, not a white primary, and an African
American wins. That was a great moment in American
history."
Jackson himself made two presidential attempts, in 1984 and
1988, and though he won in five and 11 contests respectively
he failed to gain the Democratic nomination. "Whites were
reluctant then to break the culture barrier," he says.
He remembers a night speaking at a rally in a cornfield in
Iowa, and after the event an old white man came up to him
and said: "Reverend, you have a good message, but we are
just not there yet. But don't give up on us."
"That has never left my mind," says Jackson.
Obama has paid homage to Jackson as the man who made his
presidential run in 2008 possible. Jackson accepts the
compliment, and articulates it: "I went around and kissed the
hands and held the babies. And those babies are now growing
up and voting. So we are seeing the maturing of America; the
country is growing up politically."
If you put all these disparate elements together, the positive
and the not so positive, how far has America come since that
terrible night at the Lorraine motel? "There is unfinished
business," replies Jackson. "But when you see an African
American who came from a housing project in Chicago now
governor of Massachusetts, when you see 42 blacks in
Congress, and Barack Obama leading in delegates and the
popular vote to be presidential nominee, that is some of the
promised land beyond the mountaintop."
_____________________________________________
By Guardian Unlimited © Copyright Guardian Newspapers 2008
black in great numbers, that is a rebirth for America."
He singles out the recent primary in Mississippi, a state made
notorious by a succession of murders of civil rights activists.
"This was where Emmett Till was killed, Medgar Evers was
killed, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner
were all killed. And now Mississippi holds a national
Democratic primary, not a white primary, and an African
American wins. That was a great moment in American
history."
Jackson himself made two presidential attempts, in 1984 and
1988, and though he won in five and 11 contests respectively
he failed to gain the Democratic nomination. "Whites were
reluctant then to break the culture barrier," he says.
He remembers a night speaking at a rally in a cornfield in
Iowa, and after the event an old white man came up to him
and said: "Reverend, you have a good message, but we are
just not there yet. But don't give up on us."
"That has never left my mind," says Jackson.
Obama has paid homage to Jackson as the man who made his
presidential run in 2008 possible. Jackson accepts the
compliment, and articulates it: "I went around and kissed the
hands and held the babies. And those babies are now growing
up and voting. So we are seeing the maturing of America; the
country is growing up politically."
If you put all these disparate elements together, the positive
and the not so positive, how far has America come since that
terrible night at the Lorraine motel? "There is unfinished
business," replies Jackson. "But when you see an African
American who came from a housing project in Chicago now
governor of Massachusetts, when you see 42 blacks in
Congress, and Barack Obama leading in delegates and the
popular vote to be presidential nominee, that is some of the
promised land beyond the mountaintop."
_____________________________________________
By Guardian Unlimited © Copyright Guardian Newspapers 2008
Despite this
double-edged message,
Jackson sees the
Democratic race for
the presidential
nomination this year
as a cause of real
rejoicing.
double-edged message,
Jackson sees the
Democratic race for
the presidential
nomination this year
as a cause of real
rejoicing.
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