The Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. appeared at the 2024 Democratic National Convention surrounded by the Rev. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson Jr. Columnist Earl Ofari Hutchinson writes that it will be hard to replace the elder Jackson, who is one of the surviving leaders of the civil rights era.
Courtesy photo
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Contributing Columnist
The news that the Rev. Jesse Jackson was hospitalized ignited an avalanche of media and public commentary, speculation and tributes to him.
Jackson is battling a rare neurological disorder that most people had never heard of. And it has often proved fatal.
This prompted the intense look at Jackson’s history, accomplishments and place in the civil rights battles of the past half century. It also raised the perennial question what can replace that style, or even should Jackson and his style of aggressive, activist civil rights leadership be replaced?
It’s not just a question of Jackson. It’s also a question of the Donald Trump era. This is a time when many Blacks say a Jesse Jackson is needed now more than ever. There’s much truth to that.
However, the brutal reality is that it’s virtually impossible to envision that happening. Jackson’s brand of intense, 1960s activism was a product of a different time and different place in America.
Let’s start with what spawned Jackson — the monumental 1963 March on Washington. The march punctuated by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s towering “I Have a Dream” speech acted as a powerful wrecking ball that crumbled the walls of legal segregation and ushered in an era of unbridled opportunities for many Blacks.
The results are unmistakable. Blacks are better educated, more prosperous, own more businesses, hold more positions in the professions, have more elected officials, and high-ranking corporate officials, managers and executives than ever before.
Yet, that masked the harsh reality that the times and challenges now are far different and, in some ways, far more daunting than what Jackson faced.
As America unraveled in the 1960s in the anarchy of urban riots, campus takeovers and anti-war street battles, the civil rights movement and its leaders fell apart, too. Many of them fell victim to their own success and failure.
When they broke down the racially restricted doors of corporations, government agencies and universities, middle class Blacks, not the poor, were the ones who rushed headlong through them.
King’s murder in 1968 was the turning point for race relations in America. The self-destruction from within and political sabotage from outside of Black organizations left the Black poor organizationally fragmented and politically rudderless.
The Black poor, lacking competitive technical skills and professional training and shunned by many middle-class Black leaders, became expendable jail, street and cemetery fodder. Some turned to gangs, guns and drugs to survive.
Countless studies have shown that the economic and social gaps between whites and African Americans have widened over the last few decades despite massive spending by federal and state governments, state and federal civil rights laws and two decades of affirmative action programs. The racial polarization has been endemic between Blacks and whites on virtually every issue from the battle over and need for diversity, equity and inclusion to the gaping racial disparities in health, education and the criminal justice system.
The Trump assault on the civil rights gains that Jackson and other civil rights leaders were instrumental in ushering in is in a sense an escalation in the backlash to their brand of civil rights activism and accomplishment.
There’s no reason to expect Trump and his MAGA millions will put pause to that. The series of No Kings marches were pushbacks against Trump’s brutal assault. They were a carbon copy of the style and techniques of mass protest that Jackson was at the center of for so many years.
But again, times are different. Jackson and the civil rights era leaders had the sympathy and goodwill of millions of whites, politicians and business leaders in the peak years of the civil rights movement. Much of that goodwill has vanished in the belief that Blacks have attained full equality.
Then there’s the reality that race matters in America but it is no longer framed exclusively in Black and white. Latinos and Asians have become major players in the fight for political and economic empowerment and figure big in the political strategies of Democratic and Republican presidential contenders.
A Jackson replacement would have to figure out ways to balance the competing and contradictory needs of these and other ethnic groups and patch them into a workable coalition for change.
It’s grossly unfair to expect today’s civil rights leaders to be the charismatic, aggressive champions of civil rights that Jackson was. Or to think that another March on Washington could solve the seemingly intractable problems of the Black poor.
The times and circumstances have changed too much for that. Still, today’s crop of civil rights activists can draw strength from Jackson’s courage, vision and dedication. They can fight the hardest they can against racial and economic injustices that have hardly disappeared. This is still a big and significant step toward again carrying the torch that Jackson carried for so long and so well.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His latest book is “White-Supremacist-In-Chief” (Middle Passage Press).
