Jesse Jackson, who has died aged 84, was the last of the great American civil rights orators to speak almost exclusively in rhyme, a habit that began as inspiration and ended as compulsion, rather like a jazz musician who can no longer play in anything but 7/4 time. In an age that preferred prose, Jackson insisted on verse; even his grocery lists, one suspects, scanned.
Born in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1941, he rose through the ranks of Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference with the energy of a man who had discovered that indignation paid better than calm. Operation Breadbasket, the Rainbow Coalition, two spirited runs for the presidency — all were conducted with the solemn conviction that history was waiting for his next couplet. “Keep hope alive” became his signature line, delivered with such rhythmic certainty that audiences half-expected him to follow it with “jive”. There were stumbles. The “Hymietown” remark in 1984 revealed that even the most practised tongue could slip into territory where angels feared to tread. Jackson apologised with the fluency of a man who had apologised before and would apologise again; the episode merely added a minor key to his otherwise triumphant score.
In later years he became a roving ambassador of moral outrage, appearing wherever cameras gathered and injustice was suspected. He counselled O.J. Simpson during the trial of the century, offering spiritual support at a moment when the nation seemed to need less theology and more evidence. The visit was widely noted, though its precise effect on the verdict remains unclear. Immortality of a sort arrived courtesy of South Park, where Jackson featured in an episode that examined the etiquette of racial apology with the delicacy of a sledgehammer. The climax — a grown man literally kissing Jackson’s backside to prove his lack of prejudice — was absurd, unflattering, and, in the circumstances, weirdly accurate.
In the end Parkinson’s disease slowed the cadence, but never entirely silenced it. Jackson kept hope alive long after many had quietly declared it dead. One can imagine him now, ascending, still searching for a rhyme for “eternity”. He will not be easily replaced; very few people, after all, can make a moral point and a metre at the same time.
Born in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1941, he rose through the ranks of Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference with the energy of a man who had discovered that indignation paid better than calm. Operation Breadbasket, the Rainbow Coalition, two spirited runs for the presidency — all were conducted with the solemn conviction that history was waiting for his next couplet. “Keep hope alive” became his signature line, delivered with such rhythmic certainty that audiences half-expected him to follow it with “jive”. There were stumbles. The “Hymietown” remark in 1984 revealed that even the most practised tongue could slip into territory where angels feared to tread. Jackson apologised with the fluency of a man who had apologised before and would apologise again; the episode merely added a minor key to his otherwise triumphant score.
In later years he became a roving ambassador of moral outrage, appearing wherever cameras gathered and injustice was suspected. He counselled O.J. Simpson during the trial of the century, offering spiritual support at a moment when the nation seemed to need less theology and more evidence. The visit was widely noted, though its precise effect on the verdict remains unclear. Immortality of a sort arrived courtesy of South Park, where Jackson featured in an episode that examined the etiquette of racial apology with the delicacy of a sledgehammer. The climax — a grown man literally kissing Jackson’s backside to prove his lack of prejudice — was absurd, unflattering, and, in the circumstances, weirdly accurate.
In the end Parkinson’s disease slowed the cadence, but never entirely silenced it. Jackson kept hope alive long after many had quietly declared it dead. One can imagine him now, ascending, still searching for a rhyme for “eternity”. He will not be easily replaced; very few people, after all, can make a moral point and a metre at the same time.