Jesse Jackson
stirs black
awareness
A new psycho-biographer, Robert Dallek,
blames Ronald Reagan's "exaggerated premium on self-mastery in his own life and the
life of the nation" on the President's encounters with his father's alcoholic binges. Likewise other historians have sought to explain
Richard Nixon or John Kennedy in terms of
childhood experiences.
—| Now such explanations
are being advanced about
:}i the Rev.. Jesse Jackson
|| and his phenomenal rise.
11 A recent Wall Street
Journal article insisted
that what makes Jesse
run is a haunting fear of
rejection associated with
his childhood in Greenville, S.C. "When I was
in my mother's belly,"
Snider Jackson surprisingly told
a Los Angeles audience
last year, "(I had) no father to give me a
name." When I was a child, he added, "they
called me bastard and rejected me." Jackson-
lived in one house with his mother and stepfather while "painfully aware that his biological fathers lived next door."
Such searing experiences can, and do, ex-
William D. Snider
ert powerful influences. "Humiliation —
that's really the fuel that pushes Jesse," said
his half brother. "He has this insatiable need
to prove he's the best."
Those who have encountered Jackson on
his way up have been impressed by his
drive. As a Greensboro editor in the early
1960s, I first met Jackson when he was a
student at A&T State University, serving as
president of the student body, captain of the
football team and leader of the downtown
marches to eliminate segregation in theaters
and restaurants. He was an impressive personality — handsome, intelligent and self-
assured but not nearly as intense and bombastic as he appears today.
But he knew how to get things done. He
and Capt. William Jackson (a white) of the
Greensboro Police Department worked out a
procedure for guaranteeing peaceful marches from the A&T campus downtown, even in
the midst of competing Ku Klux Klan rallies.
Jackson perceived even then, along with
his mentor Martin Luther King, that working within the framework of the democratic
system would accomplish more than lawlessness and violence. King's associates believe
Jackson exaggerated his friendship with
King after his assassination in 1968 and capitalized on it unfairly. They also criticize
Jackson's sloppy administration of his Chicago-based operation PUSH — People United
To Save Humanitv — and think his grasping
Second Opinion
The writer is retired editor of The
Greensboro Record and the Greensboro Daily News.
after personal glory exceeds his interest in
humanitarian uplift. Beyond that Jackson's
foreign policy and domestic views — his pro-
Palestinian tilt, for example, and his radical
ideas about majoritarian rule in this country
— shock those who might otherwise be
drawn to him.
But Jesse Jackson's dramatic rescue of Lt.
Robert Goodman Jr., from Syria last, fall
projected him into the celebrity ranks. This
year his genius at speechmaking and debate,
as Robert Strauss noted, has "changed the
chemistry" of the presidential nomination
fight.
By far the most significant impact of Jackson's candidacy has been his electrifying influence on black awareness of public affairs.
A tidal wave of black registration has flooded the nation. ABC News estimates, based
on exit polls and key precinct reports, that
the black vote this year was up 30 percent in
Florida over the primaries in 1980, up between 54 and 75 percent in Illinois, up 106
percent in Georgia and up 115 percent in
Alabama. This has the appearance of an electoral revolution. It may be the most important development in 1984 politics.
Nobody believes Jackson has even an outside chance of winning the nomination himself. But he will be a major broker at San
Francisco. And those who know him think
he will strongly support the Democratic candidate in November. This would give him a
share of the new Democratic administration, if elected.
But the unknown and equally explosive
factor is whether what Jackson calls his
"rainbow coalition" will stimulate backlash.
As long as Jackson runs as the black candidate rather than the candidate who happens
to be black, he exposes himself to such possibilities. Hard-headed politicians will exploit
such an issue if they possibly can. A shrewd
North Carolina Democrat said recently:
"Politically, I'm very apprehensive about
what all this will mean. I really think the
whole thing has a negative potential."
But such soothsayers have proved wrong
in the past. Trying to exploit a race issue
these days can, if indelicately handled, become a double-edged sword.
A prominent Tar Heel political leader said
the other day that Jesse Jackson is a potential president four or eight years from now.
Others think Jesse may be only the black
forerunner, a kind of John the Baptist, for
another who will master the political obstacle course more successfully than Jackson.
Whatever the future, things will never be
quite the same. Jesse Jackson has, as he declares, "destroyed the myth that blacks are
politically apathetic." Now he must show
whether he can complete the unfinished task
of his dream: "Moving from racial battle
ground to economic, political and social common ground."
