The Rev. Jesse Jackson died on Feb. 17 at the age of 84, leaving behind a legacy of activism and public service matched only by those who preceded him in death.
After the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 assassination, Jackson carried on the battle for social justice and economic parity via the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and what would eventually become the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
Decades later, as a two-time presidential candidate, he challenged a Democratic Party that wasn’t quite ready to accept grassroots representation. Amid these and several other feats, many young Washingtonians, including Markus Batchelor, came to appreciate Jackson’s contributions to the statehood movement.
“Rev. Jackson’s vision of a broad, diverse, inclusive movement for dignity, justice and equality is needed now more than ever,” Batchelor, 33, said about Jackson, who served as one of the District’s first shadow senators between 1991 and 1997. “It’s a major part of the reason I decided to run for the seat he held at this moment. It’s the type of movement we’ll need to build and sustain here at home and across the country to finally win D.C. statehood.”
Batchelor, national political director at People for the American Way, launched his bid for D.C. shadow senator on Jan. 14. He’s running, as he says on his campaign website, to tie D.C.’s fight for statehood to the ongoing fight for democracy and inclusion.
For more than a month, Batchelor has been making the rounds, spreading his message and challenging misconceptions about what some may see as a ceremonial role. The Southeast resident, born during Jackson’s stint as shadow senator, said the late civil rights figure exemplifies the execution of people power.
“Like so many in my generation, I grew up witnessing leaders like Jesse Jackson insist that change requires courage, persistence, and a willingness to challenge systems that exclude,” Batchelor told The Informer. “His life reinforced a lesson that continues to guide me: that progress is never inevitable. It is built by people willing to organize, to speak out, and to push forward even when the path is difficult.”
Cora Masters Barry Remembers a Family Friend
In spite of a global profile that took him as far as Iraq and Syria in rescue of hostages, Jackson remained a local fixture. In 1963, he watched King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial. Other instances on the National Mall include the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign, the 1995 Million Man March and the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington in 2013.
During the early decades of District home rule, Jackson also deepened his relationship with Marion Barry, D.C.’s mayor for life. Barry’s widow, Cora Masters Barry, said the duo’s rapport, as depicted in a 1989 photo of their one-on-one basketball at Potomac Gardens in Southeast, represented mutual respect.
“Oh God, they were funny. They finished each other’s sentences,” Masters Barry told The Informer. “They were competitors, but extremely supportive of each other.”
That support came in handy one year prior, when Jackson took a momentous step in national politics.
“When Jesse wanted to run for president of the United States, he wasn’t getting a lot of support,” Masters Barry recalled. “The only two mayors that would support him [were] Maynard Jackson and Marion.”
Masters Barry said her late husband went the extra mile for Jackson.
“He staged Jesse’s announcement for president of the United States at the D.C. Convention Center,” she told The Informer. “All the D.C. government workers there gave them three hours liberally to be there.”
Masters Barry first met Jackson during the 1976 Democratic National Convention. As she recalled, Jackson stood among Basil Paterson, David Dinkins and other members of the Black political elite as they shaped a platform to present before the party that would eventually nominate Jimmy Carter.
Masters Barry told The Informer that Jackson held nothing back in his mission to make the Democratic Party the party of the people.
“If you didn’t get…so many delegates to go to the convention, you couldn’t get on the floor of the convention,” Masters Barry said. “He made them stop doing that, so he was a transformative figure.”
Four years later, when Ronald Reagan defeated then-President Carter, Masters Barry heard what she described as Jackson’s passionate cry to Black voters who didn’t go to the polls.
“He likened that to the Bible story of David and Goliath— how David stood in front of the giant and had nothing but a slingshot. He looked around and he saw all these rocks laying around and he would pick the rocks up and he slayed the giant,” Masters Barry said. “He said our votes that are not being used are like rocks laying around. If we just use those votes, we could slay the giant. If we vote, we could be victorious.”
Jackson officiated the Barrys’ 1994 wedding and even eulogized Barry when he died in 2014. Less than a decade later, despite his own maladies, Jackson honored his late friend in a video that aired at the naming ceremony for Marion Barry Avenue in Southeast.
“He wanted to be there, but he was too fragile to make it,” Masters Barry said. “It took a lot for him to do [the video] because he was at the stage in his health that everything was very difficult.”
Hours after learning about Jackson’s death on Feb. 17, Masters Barry was still in awe about what she calls the changing of the guard.
“There’s bravery and courage and a fearlessness that they possessed that I’ve not been able to see in many generations,” Masters Barry said about Jackson and her late husband. “The moments that they faced and the things that they had to deal with came from the condition of a dynamic environment that they grew up in where Black people were treated as second-class citizens, and it developed a condition in them that made their leadership sacrificial.”
Though she remains hopeful about the current fight against fascism, Masters Barry noted that the type of leadership exhibited by Jackson and Barry only comes from living amid Jim Crow.
“They stood in the gap for our people and risked their lives [when] killing Black people was a sport, not a crime,” she told The Informer.
Jesse Jackson: A Civil Rights Legend Remembered
Tributes continue to pour in for Jackson, a one-time resident of LeDroit Park and frequenter of Ben’s Chili Bowl on U Street NW, where Black history aficionados can find a photo of him and King.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser acknowledged Jackson as a trendsetter.
“For many in our country, he was the first person they heard make the case for D.C. statehood,” Bowser said in a statement. “The first person they heard say: It’s the right thing to do. He preached the stories and lessons of the giants whose shoulders we stand upon, and in time, became a giant himself. I am blessed to have known and learned from Rev. Jackson.
On Tuesday, D.C. Councilmember Anita Bonds (D-At large), a member of Jackson’s 1984 presidential campaign team, heralded him for holding power accountable and expanding the nation’s collective imagination about what’s possible.
“When I think of good government, where all share in the shaping of our democratic republic, I think of the impact Rev. Jackson had on it,” Bonds said in a statement. “So much of what our country desires most – inclusion, government by the people with justice, equality and equity for all -is because of his work and leadership.”
District Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton paid homage to a comrade in the struggle for the District’s self-determination.
“In his years representing the District, Rev. Jackson stood firmly for D.C. statehood and full self‑governance,” Norton said in a statement. “He recognized that the denial of representation to D.C. residents was a civil rights issue at the heart of America’s unfinished democratic promise.”
As Frank Smith, a former D.C. council member, told The Informer, Jackson made the world better.
“Jesse has been a force in the Civil Rights Movement for the last 60 years,” Smith said. “He spent his entire life fighting for civil rights and the betterment of this nation. I knew him as an activist, as a neighbor and as a politician, when he was a shadow senator fighting for statehood of Washington, D.C. He gave his best as long as he could and for that we owe him a debt of gratitude as he goes home to take his rest.”