The first time I met the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr., I had been invited to speak at the Capitol at an event hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus on the role of race in U.S. culture. The 2009 gathering marked the 25th anniversary of Jesse Jackson’s groundbreaking presidential campaign and occurred just one year after the nation elected Barack Obama as its first African American president. Jackson did not dwell on historic symbolism that evening. He insisted that political milestones mean little without a sustained commitment to economic justice and civil rights. I remember the weight of that moment.
Shortly before it was my turn to speak, I leaned toward the panelist sitting next to me and whispered, “How am I supposed to follow him?” To stand in the presence of a leader whose voice helped shape the moral vocabulary of modern America was both humbling and clarifying. Reverend Jackson did not simply attend gatherings. He transformed them. His presence made clear that the struggle for justice is never abstract. It is urgent and demands courage.
Jackson’s life stands as a testament to what it means to move a nation forward even when it resists being moved. Through Operation PUSH and later the Rainbow Coalition, he called the country to confront the interlocking injustices of poverty, racism, economic exclusion, and political apathy.
Born in Greenville, South Carolina, to a teenage mother and raised in the heart of segregation, Jackson knew these injustices intimately. Hunger was a lived reality that sharpened his commitment to affirming the dignity of people pushed to the margins of society. He rejected the notion that poverty was a private failure. It was, he insisted, a public responsibility. “Conservatives and progressives, when you fight for what you believe, right wing, left wing, hawk, dove, you are right from your point of view, but your point of view is not enough,” he reminded us. Not because despair is inevitable, but because collective struggle expands the realm of possibility. The quest for full citizenship would become a defining feature of Jackson’s ministry and his politics. In 1960, Jackson was one of eight students arrested during a peaceful sit-in to protest the town’s segregated library system.
His 1984 presidential campaign marked a watershed moment in American political life. At a time when a viable Black presidential candidate seemed implausible to many, Reverend Jackson built a multiracial, multifaith coalition rooted in shared economic and democratic aspirations. He registered millions of new voters and brought farmers, laborers, urban communities, immigrants, and the poor into a broader vision of political power. Expanding the electorate was itself an act of justice. Jackson’s campaign did more than seek office. It redefined who could belong at the center of American democracy.
Today, that work remains unfinished. The promise of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, once the crown jewel of the Civil Rights Movement, has been steadily narrowed. The Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder invalidated the preclearance formula that for decades required jurisdictions with histories of discrimination to secure federal approval before changing voting laws. In its wake, states across the country have enacted stricter voter identification requirements, reduced early voting, purged voter rolls, and redrawn district lines in ways that dilute minority political power. Battles over ballot access, election administration, and vote counting now define our democratic landscape.
As a scholar of civic engagement and voting rights, I believe democracy is strongest when those historically excluded claim their voice and participate. Reverend Jackson embodied that truth long before it was widely embraced. He understood that expanding the electorate is not a partisan act. It is a democratic imperative. Civic participation is not ceremonial. It is protective. Civic leadership must be claimed, not assumed.
Jackson’s conviction was forged in struggle. As a young organizer, Jackson stood with Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on April 4, 1968, when King was assassinated. He witnessed firsthand the cost of prophetic leadership and the unfinished work of justice. Rather than retreat, Jackson pressed forward to build movements that linked moral witness to institutional change.
Even in later years, when Parkinson’s disease weakened Jackson’s body and quieted the voice that once filled convention halls, it did not silence his resolve. He continued to insist that ballots are instruments of power and that democracy demands participation. When Jackson urged young people to pick up a slingshot, a rock, or a ballot, he was teaching a durable lesson: power must be exercised. Institutions must be engaged. And each generation must claim its role in shaping the nation’s future. That charge now guides our work to mobilize young people across the nation, not around a party or candidate, but around enduring ideals. We are calling a new generation to civic leadership as an investment in our shared future and in democracy’s power to protect our most basic rights and values.
