At DNC, Democrats Celebrate Jesse Jackson and the 'Seeds' He ...

The Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. is honored at the Democratic National Convention at the United Center on Aug. 19, 2024. (WTTW News)

Mayor Brandon Johnson will never forget the time the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. approached him and praised his work as a leader of the Chicago Teachers Union.

“He says, you’re a great organizer, son,” Johnson said Thursday, at the 58th annual convention of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the organization Jackson started and turned into a force in national politics. “But if you were to ever buy a suit and get a haircut, you just might make something of yourself. Well, Reverend, I got a haircut, I put on a suit, and I’m the mayor of the greatest freaking city in the world.”

As the crowd erupted in laughter and cheers, Johnson used his brief address to make it clear that he sees himself as part of Jackson’s political legacy in Chicago that includes former Mayor Harold Washington, former President Barack Obama, Johnson and now Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president.

Harris has embraced one of Jackson’s immortal turns of phrase — “when we fight, we win” — as a call and response during her speeches that brings thousands of supporters to their feet to shout the final two words along with her. For many Chicagoans, the rallying cry is most familiar as the slogan that powered the 2019 Chicago Teachers Union strike that won major concessions leaders said moved the city closer to the vision laid out by Jackson 40 years ago.

Jackson, 82, a delegate to the Democratic National Convention from Illinois, was celebrated during Monday’s session of the convention, earning a loud ovation from the crowd.

“Jesse Jackson is a legend,” Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch told WTTW News. “We owe everything to Jesse Jackson.”

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, the head of the Cook County Democratic Party, said she was glad the Democratic Party was honoring Jackson.

“Rev. Jackson has been prophetic in his analysis of the challenges we face in this country,” Preckwinkle said, calling his bid for president “historic.”

Jackson’s legacy took center stage Monday during the opening night of the DNC, as the party celebrated his nearly six decades of activism — and his status as the first Black person to win a major party’s presidential state primary or caucus.

“Dad planted the seeds that have now germinated,” said U.S. Rep. Jonathan Jackson, the second of the reverend’s sons to be elected to Congress, calling Harris “our sister, our friend.”

Although Jackson Sr. was born and raised in Greenville, South Carolina, he has called Chicago home since the Rev. Martin Luther King asked him to lead the Chicago chapter of Operation Breadbasket, which was dedicated to economic justice.

Jackson rose to national prominence after King’s assassination in Memphis, which Jackson witnessed.

Four years later, Jackson would demonstrate his political might at the 1972 DNC in Miami, when he ousted the Illinois delegation led by former Mayor Richard J. Daley as part of a reform push that helped weaken the famed Democratic machine by showing that it was not infallible.

That victory in the push for reform emboldened groups like PUSH to take on the machine after Daley’s death by launching a massive voter registration drive that played a key role in electing Washington, Chicago’s first Black mayor.

That energy — and the sense that a different Chicago was possible after decades of control by Daley and his allies — inspired Obama to move to Chicago, and launch an unlikely career that would carry him, as well as the hopes of many Black Americans, to the presidency.

But before then, Jackson would make his own bid for the White House in 1984. Although he came up short, he won 3 million votes — and a coveted prime-time speaking slot at the DNC in San Francisco.

Jackson, at the height of his powers as orator, painted a picture of a new America: one where people of all races lived in social, racial and economic equity as part of a Rainbow Coalition. That vision shaped the platform of the Democratic Party for decades, and laid the foundation for Harris’ pitch to the country, 40 years later.

“America is not like a blanket: one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size,” Jackson said. “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 businessperson, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay and the disabled make up the American quilt.”

That speech made Jackson a force to be reckoned with, and fueled his 1988 run for president. That bid also came up short, but Jackson won nearly 7 million votes.

Jackson used his address to the 1988 DNC in Atlanta to coin a phrase that has become an indelible refrain when he told the crowd he would not stop striving to make America a better place to live.

Jackson has kept his promise to “keep hope alive,” Johnson told the Rainbow PUSH convention, and now it is up to those who Jackson nurtured and inspired to carry on his work.

Jackson’s criticism of the normal procedure the Democratic Party used to pick its presidential nominees resulted in significant changes. No longer is it a winner-take-all system, but one where candidates are awarded delegates in proportion to the votes they win.

Jackson addressed the DNC in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2016.

Jackson does not always get the credit he deserves, Johnson said.

But as the party that he helped reshape recognizes his contributions on the biggest stage, Jackson can rest assured that he won the war to reshape the soul of the Democratic Party he fought both in Chicago, and across America.

Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]