Jesse

"Never look down on anybody unless you're helping him up" - Jesse Jackson

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Jesse Jackson shared my birthday so, ridiculously perhaps, I felt something of a bond with him. He knew Martin Luther King Junior well and carried on his work after the great man's assassination. It would have been easier for Jesse Jackson to live a quiet life, away from the media and the hurly burly of current affairs and politics but he chose to stand up and be counted. All his adult life, he fought the good fight in the name of justice, freedom and equality.

If you want to know more details about his life, please go to his Wikipedia page.

Straight after the American presidential election in November 2016, Jesse Jackson wrote an article for "The Guardian" newspaper. Much of what he said was prescient:-

"Based on Trump’s campaign rhetoric and the Republican party platform, the social, racial and economic progress America has made over recent decades is in danger: gender equality, the fight for a living wage, affordable healthcare, the struggle for sensible gun control laws, immigration reform and the regeneration of urban communities.

We can only hope he will not govern the way he campaigned – a steady diet of retrograde fantasies and divisive talk about taking the country back. Back to where? When Jim Crow and American apartheid ruled the land; when women could not vote or serve on juries?

I have known Trump for years and, until this bruising campaign, always thought him a decent man. We had our political differences, but I was surprised he turned so quickly and sharply to the right in his quest for power. It saddened and alarmed me that his words resonated so deeply with the racist right that the Ku Klux Klan’s leading newspaper endorsed him."

Although our American cousins are all familiar with the historic  term, "Jim Crow", European and Australian visitors may be puzzled by it so let me explain...

Jim Crow refers to a legalized system of racial apartheid and segregation in the Southern United States from the late nineteenth century until the mid-1960s. These state and local laws enforced the separation of black and white people in public spaces, including schools, transportation, and restaurants, effectively ensuring a second-class status for African Americans. The term stems from a nineteenth century minstrel character who denigrated black Americans for the amusement of largely white audiences.

Jesse would have been the first to admit that he was imperfect but compared with most public figures, he lived a good life and sought to do what was righteous on behalf of his fellow human beings - not just in America but around the world.