Transcript:

Michele Goodwin:

Welcome to On the Issues with Michele Goodwin at Ms. Magazine, a platform where we report, we rebel, and we tell it just like it is. And on this show, History Matters, we examine the past as we think about the future.

And this is a special recording and meeting, paying homage to the life of Reverend Jesse Lewis Jackson, Sr. It’s hard for me to say goodbye. You know, he lived by the motto, never surrender, and he once told me that people drown not because of the water being over their heads, but because they stop kicking. I’ll never forget that.

He died at 84 years old in the early hours on February 17th in Chicago, Illinois, a city that he loved, and to which he devoted his time, care, and exceptional political and economic vision and talent. He was a protege of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, the founder and president of Rainbow PUSH Coalition, and he stood tall and was one of America’s foremost civil rights, religious, and political figures. He was also my friend.

His career was extraordinary. He was a deft and savvy international negotiator. Brokering the release of hostages around the world, including Navy pilot Robert Goodman in 1984, hundreds held in Kuwait by Saddam Hussein in 1991, and three U.S. prisoners of war held by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in 1999.

He was also personable and reachable, spending time in many different ways, including on the popular children’s show Sesame Street, messaging to the children, I am somebody the profound value of self-worth and dignity to children for whom our society had cast aside.

Reverend Jackson was an advocate for the poor, especially as he knew what it was to be shut out and to be shut down by the nature of one’s birth. He was born in the throes of Jim Crow on October 8th, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina, a state that permitted the brandishing and selling of black bodies straight off slave ships. The state with the largest slave auctions and ports of entry in the nation.

As he related his birth at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, he said, I understand. I wasn’t born in the hospital. I was born in the bed at the house. I really do understand. Born in a three-room house, bathroom in the backyard, slop jar by the bed, no hot and cold running water.

I understand, he said Wallpaper used for decoration? No. For windbreaker? I understand. He said, I’m a working person’s person. That’s why I understand you, whether you’re black or white.

He ran for president in 1984 and 1988, giving a vision of hope for so many Americans who needed it. He was the great unifier, boldly and proudly, under a rainbow flag, challenging America to be inclusive and to establish just and humane priorities for the benefit of all.

As he told the world, our flag is red, white, and blue, but our nation is a rainbow, red, yellow, brown, Black, and white, and we’re all precious in God’s sight. He was known for bringing people together on common ground across lines of race, culture, class, gender, and belief.

In his riveting 1984 speech at the Democratic National Convention, here’s what he explained. America is not like a blanket, one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt. Many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread. The white, the Hispanic, the Black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the Native American, the small farmer, the business person, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay, and the disabled make up the American quilt.

His passing marks the heartbreaking end of an era for me because he was a courageous and bold leader, when so many others were and have been silent. In 1988, concluding his run for president, he told the packed audience at the DNC, gays and lesbians, when you fight against discrimination and a cure for AIDS, you are right. But your patch is not big enough. Reverend Jackson gave his voice and a patch from his own quilt to fight the cause. At a time in which political gay bashing, violence, stereotyping, and stigma were the norm in both government and also in America’s courts.

Today, that vision rings prescient as international support for HIV and AIDS has been stripped away under the Trump administration, and attacks on LGBTQ lives are on the rise. According to GLAAD, in 2026, the LGBTQ community is facing unprecedented challenges to rights and safety.

Yet, to Reverend Jackson, this was an intimate issue. It was righteous to care about LGBTQ individuals in the community as a whole. He cautioned, but don’t despair. Be wise, as my grandmama. Pull the patches and pieces together, bound by a common thread, he said.

His sense of America as a common thread consistently centered women. And his clear and coherent advice was that, quote, we must never surrender to inequality. And long before the use of the word ally as a shorthand for supporting, or at least not standing in the way of women’s progress, Reverend Jackson was unequivocal and unmistakable. He urged the following. And I quote. Women cannot compromise ERA, or comparable worth. Women are making 60 cents on the dollar to what a man makes. Women cannot buy meat cheaper. Women cannot buy bread cheaper. Women cannot buy milk cheaper. Women deserve to get paid for the work that you do. Few male politicians were courageous enough to speak those truths. Instead, for so many, while they may not have said that women should be relegated to the back of the bus or plane, they were also not ready for women to lead and pilot.

I knew Reverend Jackson beyond conventions. He married me and my husband, Gregory Schaefer, almost 25 years ago. He always showed up and gave graciously of himself when I called, whether it was to host a convening on HIV and AIDS at the Rainbow Push Coalition offices and headquarters in the early 2000s.

Or to bring together hundreds of working-class residents on the south side of Chicago to engage on matters of national healthcare? Or to meet with mostly a women’s group of academics coming together to figure out the intersections of law, family, and reproductive rights at the University of Chicago Club 20 years ago. He called me Doc, or Dr. Michele, and I called him Rev.

But he showed up, and in fact, today, I heard from people who were in those audiences reflecting to me about how much it meant to them to be in his company, and how generous he was.

More recently, he responded when I called about the death of Heather Heyer, a civil rights activist who was killed in Charlottesville, Virginia. It was clear that Americans felt broken at that time, and in shock after her death, much like people feel today in the wake of the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good.

Heyer’s death marked a critical turning point and rewind of American history. Donald Trump, in his first term, claimed that both sides were to blame for the violence in Charlottesville. However, Charlottesville revealed the contemporary violent nature of white nationalism, white supremacists abandoning hooded sheets in favor of tiki torches and khaki pants. Flagrant anti-Semitism, racism, and deadly violence were on display, and are on display now, today.

Even with an incredibly demanding schedule, Reverend Jackson made time, and in fact, I remember very much what it was, the tragic death of Heather Heyer, my calling him, Reverend Jackson picking up the phone. And my saying, can you come and join me and a community of people in Orange County to think this through, to talk this through about how we come together as a people, as a nation? And in less than two weeks, and in fact, it may have been just in that next week, quite literally, because that’s how he would respond.

He joined me, and he joined Rabbi Hillel Cohn and a packed audience at the Irvine, Barclay theater, where we all came together to process, as a community, just where our nation was heading, and the rise of anti-Semitism, and the vestiges of racism, and the political weakness and weaknesses in addressing both.

I remember that time so well, and I’ve spent time with Reverend Jackson since, and but I remember, at that time, his telling me, quite poignantly.

As we were walking up a set of stairs together, and he shared that he would be seeing a doctor soon about some trouble that he was having with his arm. And it is not long after that that his diagnosis came about of Parkinson’s disease, and there, too, a quite brave and revealing, person, as he shared his own medical journey, and we all came to see and witness still an incredibly sharp mind as the body began to fold a bit.

The sharpness of his mind continued until the point of, his passing, he had a memory like no one that I know, what he could recall at the drop of a hat, a turn of a phrase. He was generous in all ways.

And very recently, in fact, it was just barely over a week ago, by his father’s bedside, Representative Jonathan Jackson and I were in touch. We spoke by phone. Actually, we spoke, he called me, I texted him, but he phoned me back. I was at intermission at the Alvin Ailey performance here in Washington, D.C, no longer at the Kennedy Center. He had just delivered a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, calling the President to account, to be more humane and just, and to do what is right. I wanted to be in touch with Jonathan about that, because it was so profound and important How he lended his voice to this moment. And as I think about it now.

And as I sat with it then, it was clear that Reverend Jackson’s legacy is already living on, and just Jonathan’s clarity. And the truth is, it’s living on. And so many people who have been touched by his legacy, whether it has been defending the interest of people with disabilities, Those who’ve been in the room with him as he’s advocated for women’s rights, the bravery, the courage, the humanity that he showed, the peak of the AIDS crisis in the United States, and ever since.

The ways in which he’s been sensitive to the concerns of the most vulnerable, and that includes the children in our society. In all of those ways, and through all of those communities.

His legacy and his life continues to live on, and I’m so very fortunate that I had the opportunity to be his friend, and also so grateful that in the various spaces in which I’ve occupied time. That he has given of himself in those spaces, too.