Thank you, Reverend

Level the Playing Field & Run with the Ball

A giant has joined the ancestors. It wasn’t unexpected, but it still stings as if I have been taken by surprise. I just spent three hours before sun-up parked in front of his office at 930 E. 50th Street, reflecting, crying, and just thinking…I watched the news trucks pull up. I hoped someone, anyone would check on me. Those who didn’t, I checked on them.

I’m still processing processing…

I am truly grateful that on many occasions I said these words, in a myriad of variations, to Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr., whom I worked for and with for over 30 years. I did not wait until he was old or ill to say them. I said them often, publicly and in private. And I meant them. They went something like this:

Thank you Rev. Jackson for seeing my somebodiness. There is ever the human need to make others feel small, unappreciated or that their efforts, no matter how great or small, didn’t matter. You aren’t like that. Even though you’re a “celebrity” you don’t liken yourself to the artificial stars. Thank you for making me feel heard, and seen. Thank you for fighting for us when you are mocked, ridiculed, lied on and even despised. You taught me a lot. When I complained of being tired or needing a vacation, you would say, “your enemy ain’t asking for a vacation… your enemy will never tire of trying to destroy you…” and I kept working and working and pressing forward—always.

No one could out work you or out smart you or out think you. So, you reinforced what my parents and grandparents instilled in me and that is to think critically, think deeply and to look at all sides of things or an issue before taking decisive action. You made everybody feel important and equal –whether they were on your staff, on the staff of one of your organizations, a volunteer or a person from the community seeking answers, information or support. As a little kid, I heard the I AM SOMEBODY, your signature call and response, that you gleaned from Dr. King’s last speech before SCLC and a popular preacher back in the 1940s or ‘50s. Like an expert student you evolved this mantra into a motto and virtue that would inspire multitudes of young people. Old people, the sick, the poor, the afraid.

You didn’t step over a small somebody to get to a big somebody like the big somebodies do. They even push us (your staff) out of the way, as if we’re invisible. You set the tone and vision, we did the work, and it was hard, thankless work, often done in the background, while you stood in total praise. I didn’t mind—because it was never about that for me. I told you that a 100 times. I was for the liberation of my people, for the struggle…. I didn’t get this way by working for you in Washington, or in Chicago or while flying across the globe. I came to you with his commitment and focus, but you gave me skills that continue to be unmatched.

Thank you for allowing me to meet and get to know your family—including Mrs. Jackson, your children, your siblings, your mother Helen and your father Noah, Sr. down in Greenville, S.C.

Thank you for not letting me go to Kosovo and for telling me you were worried that the delegation wouldn’t make it back. You have no idea how relieved I was that I didn’t have to do another international flight—-I hate flying and I still do, and you kept us on them planes! Thank you for not yelling at me the last time I refused to get on one—-I’m sorry, I had HAD enough…

Thank you Reverend for keeping your head up and your hope up when people fell down, didn’t care or even accused you of trying to steal the spotlight. They were about the spotlight, you were about bringing light. Thank you for your sense of humor, your willingness to teach and to also chastise. Thank your displaying courage that time the KKK surrounded us that time in Decatur; and thank you for wanting to knock that pilot out who purposely flew us through scary turbulence in which I thought on that day I would die. You used to ask me why I didn’t “ask you for mothing.” And I answered it the same way every time—first with a strange look, and then with sincerity. “What am I supposed to ask you for? You’re doing everything I want—fighting for our people! I ain’t one of those people, Rev., there’s nothing I want other than that…” And I meant it. Because of you I met some of the greatest people on the planet, and became friends with some of them. People in movies, history books, music, politics, revolutions and cultural affairs. And even in their presence you had a way of making me feel as if I belonged among them—though I was working and just standing in the back, working, watching, thinking….as I mostly did.

Thank you for opening schools and trying to close jails. Thank you for standing with workers and farmers and the unemployed. Thank you for fighting for million-dollar athletes and no dollar high school students trying to get their education. Thank you for freeing hostages—many of whom you said didn’t even say ‘thank you.’ Thank you for creating a public forum where people could express themselves and hold those in power accountable. Thank you for putting Black products on the shelves, for teaching financial literacy and for warning preachers not to take “faith-based money.” Thank you for fighting for actors, musicians and access to capital. Thank you for everything… for sharing your talents, your smarts, your power with us.

Thank you for your endless sports analogies, quips and southern sayings you routinely through out in staff meetings. Most of them were wise, but some were often funny, and I know you knew that I would make little comedy skits about you and me and other staffers would perform them in the Community Hall when you weren’t looking. Thank you for being able to take a joke, and for making me laugh, and for knowing how to talk smack about those who talked smack about you.

You weren’t just a boss—you were sorta like an uncle to me, I guess. You often reminded me of one. Thank you for that time you told (NAME WITHHELD) you would beat his ass if he kept sabotaging and messing with me. I’m sorry but I was snickering as you said it, and I was so hoping dude kept messing with me so I could see if you would keep your word.

Thank you Rev for being cool and annoying and demanding and needy and diligent and all over the place because problems were all over the place. You taught me to think globally and to never let someone define me by any definition that did not suit me.

Yes, thank you for reminding me that I am somebody and that who I am will be determined by my attitude and aptitude and whose I am was pre-determined by God. You weren’t perfect—but who is? I once asked you why you didn’t get upset when you were attacked by media, by critics, by citizens, by whomever… and you told me that those things didn’t matter to you. Then you asked me: Who do people run after in on a football field? The one who has the ball, you said. So keep running, you said, get across the goal line you said. The others wil come to tackle you, block your path, and stop you---but when you’ve got the ball keep running…

Thank you Reverend for leveling the playing field so the rest of us could run. I won’t stop, and I won’t let nobody—and I don’t give a DAMN who they are—make me feel small, unappreciated, unloved and unworthy of compassion and my dignity.

RIH

And, may your works and not your challenges be what all remember you by.