The Tamesis
Charlayne Hunter-Gault’s “Conversations with…Jesse Jackson” was originally published in the January 1988 issue Fashion.
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Forty-six-year-old presidential candidate Jesse Louis Jackson, one of the most dynamic forces on today’s political scene, grew up in the segregated South. He attended an all-black high school, where he was the star quarterback and popular class president, while working at an all-white hotel and an all-white golf course in Greenville, North Carolina—an experience that gave him the drive that helped him “go from the back of the bus to the front of the polls.” An active participant in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, as an aide to Martin Luther King Jr. and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Jackson was the movement’s living logical next step—a man who moved from protest to politics.
When Jackson first ran for president in 1984, his role as a “super gadfly” who effectively articulated issues in the black community won him unprecedented black support: “Run, Jesse, run” could be heard from black churches in the South to the quieter living rooms of black urban professionals. Since then, Jackson, who is married with five children, has worked to expand his base beyond the black community, forming a “rainbow coalition” of what he calls “the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected and the despised.” This time the slogan is: “Victory, Jesse, victory.”
Charlaine Hunter-Gault: At the beginning of this century, W.E.B. Du Bois said, “The problem of the twentieth century is the color line.” What does it mean to you that you are the front-runner among white candidates, but a majority of white people say they will not vote for a black man?
Jesse Jackson: The crux of the matter is how to ask the question. If you ask, would you support a black president? , the answer is almost instinctive. Instead, you ask, would you support someone who could stop the flow of drugs into this country, stop the flow of jobs out of the country, put our foreign policy on track and restore our credibility? Many people would say yes. Does it matter if he is black? No, we want the problem to be resolved. Depending on how the question is asked, people will rise to the challenge. My confidence comes from observing the considerable social development of this country over twenty-five years.
I believe Archie Bunker is full of hope. Archie Bunker’s daughter is dating interracially. Archie Bunker’s son protested against Central American and South African policies. Archie Bunker protested as Black moved away from him into the street, but he didn’t move. But his children went to public schools, not Catholic schools, he complained. He complained, but he worked on the assembly line with blacks and Hispanics. He’s in the stadium, in the stands, in the rainbow. In twenty-five years, Archie Bunker has become a better man, a more complete person.
CHG: What do you think about race relations today in light of the violent racial incidents in Howard Beach, New York, and Forsyth County, Georgia?
Jie Jie: If racial divisions are dictated by law and perpetuated by leaders, there is a problem. The difference today is that there are legal limits on racial violence. But many live indirectly through television, where blacks and Hispanics are portrayed every day as less intelligent, less hard-working, less patriotic and more violent. As long as we can tear down the barriers between the American public, people will start to see that everyone else’s plight is the same.
