I once came across Pastor Jesse Jackson. Literal.
It was in 2003 or 2004 at the NAACP Fort Lauderdale Freedom Fund Dinner. I was a high school student and member of the NAACP Youth Council, running late and walking too fast through the parking lot, out of breath and afraid I would miss the start.
Then I collided with him.
I looked up and there he was: Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson Sr.
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When you, as a teenager, unexpectedly encounter someone whose voice has defined American public life for decades, it recalibrates your sense of scale.
To many Americans, Jackson was a political figure – debated, dissected and sometimes polarizing. But in foreign capitals and in parts of America often overlooked or mischaracterized by the mainstream media, he served a different role. He was a bridge.
When American hostages were being held abroad and formal diplomacy was at a standstill, Jackson entered rooms that the U.S. State Department could not enter. He helped secure the release of Americans in Syria, Cuba and elsewhere when official channels reached their limits. Governments that distrusted Washington still engaged him. He was seen not just as a partisan emissary, but as a moral interlocutor.
At home, through Operation Breadbasket and later the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, Jackson mounted campaigns that used shareholder pressure and economic power to galvanize corporate America. With a disciplined strategy and an unwavering voice, he urged Fortune 500 companies to hire Black executives, expand minority contracting and invest in some of the country’s most diverse communities – opening economic doors that had long been closed. He understood that protest without influence rarely changes systems.
When family farmers faced exclusion in the 1980s, Jackson emerged in rural America, forging alliances that cut across race, ethnicity, and region. According to him, economic justice was not limited to one community; it was a shared national interest.
His presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988 reshaped the Democratic Party coalition and the country’s political system. He energized young, working-class voters and black voters who had long felt peripheral to power.
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At the 1988 Democratic National Convention, Jackson stated the broader vision clearly, saying, “Our flag is red, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbow – red, yellow, brown, black and white – and we are all precious in the eyes of God.”
To many Americans, Jackson was a political figure – debated, dissected and sometimes polarizing. But in foreign capitals and in parts of America often overlooked or mischaracterized by the mainstream media, he served a different role. He was a bridge.
That wasn’t just rhetoric. He designed a plan steeped in electoral mathematics. Jackson formulated what he called a Rainbow Coalition, a multiracial, multiclass governing majority. As black voters turned out in large numbers, Hispanics gained influence. When black, Hispanic and progressive white voters showed up together, women gained ground. And when women gained ground, children and workers benefited, Jackson said in that same 1988 speech.
That coalition model would later become a winning strategy for Bill Clinton’s victories in the 1990s, Barack Obama’s victories in 2008 and 2012, and Joe Biden’s coalition in 2020.
Often remembered for the tears he shed on that cold November evening in Grant Park when Barack Obama became the nation’s first black president-elect, few know what was going through Jesse Jackson’s mind. But it’s not hard to imagine that it contained a reminder of April 4, 1968: the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered.
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Without Jackson’s courage, his electoral road map, and his commitment to opening American politics to those long excluded, there might not have been a President Obama or the tangible fulfillment of King’s unfinished dream. Jackson spent much of his life trying to turn the country — and in many ways the world — toward what King called the Beloved Community, a democracy expansive enough to include everyone, even if inclusion was unpopular.
That’s why he was one of the first national leaders to grant dignity to those affected by HIV/AIDS, at a time when stigma silenced too many people. That’s why he emphasized that LGBTQ Americans were part of the democratic project, not outside of it, as that project now approaches its 250th year.
And whether it was the high-profile sanitation workers of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in Memphis in 1968, or teachers, health care workers and civil servants on modern picket lines, Jackson stood with them — not just in speeches, but in the places where dignity and livelihoods were at stake.
Some will debate his tactics. Some will criticize his politics. But no one can deny its reach.
As the son of immigrants, I have long believed that America works best when it widens the circle of belonging rather than shrinking it. One out of many. Jackson lived that tension – imperfectly, loudly but persistently.
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That afternoon in Fort Lauderdale, as a high school student I tried not to be late. He was calm, steady and unhurried. I thought I was rushing into history. In reality, I had just encountered a man who had already helped shape it—in neighborhoods, in rural towns, and in diplomatic spaces that most Americans never see.
And whether you agreed with him or not, Jesse Jackson maintained throughout his life that America could be greater than its divisions – both at home and abroad. And for that we thank him by simply saying, “Keep hope alive.”
