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Jesse Addresses Leadership Conference in Mobile, Ala
Jackson addresses fraternity in Mobile
07/12/03
By ROY HOFFMAN
Staff Reporter
The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson -- human rights activist and 1984 presidential candidate -- spoke in Mobile Friday of "storm clouds rising in Alabama" on voting rights issues, racial discrimination in hiring football coaches, and of what he called "the three July Fourths," only one of which, he said, truly speaks of freedom to black Americans.
During his luncheon address to the leadership conference of Omega Psi Phi, a traditionally black civic and social fraternity, Jackson used a speaking style at turns inspirational and dramatic.
Tall, stately and relaxed in a charcoal shirt, Jackson held sway over the crowd in the Adams Mark ballroom for 45 minutes, addressing his 700 fraternity brothers in a highlight of the group's three-day leadership conference, "Economic Empowerment Leading to Social & Political Change." Jackson joined the fraternity, founded in 1911, while a student at Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, N.C.
Among those in attendance was James Felder of Columbia, S.C., whom Jackson embraced on his way to the dais and said, in his remarks, had been one of the U.S. Army honor guards to carry President John F. Kennedy's casket. Jackson and Felder met in South Carolina as teenagers, Felder said, playing quarterback on opposing football teams. Felder joined the fraternity while a student at Clark Atlanta University.
The former presidential candidate began his remarks with a litany of ex changes with the audience. After he made each statement -- "I am somebody," "Stop the violence," and "Save the children" -- the sea of balding and silver-haired men repeated the lines in rumbling unison.
Saying that many in attendance were the first in their family to graduate from college, Jackson emphasized the importance of education to "break strong chains." He cited black Americans such as W.E.B. Dubois and Martin Luther King Jr. as exemplars of the power of education. "Those most literate, most learned," he called them, "who did the most to change their condition."
Jackson reminded the luncheon crowd that when King was 19 years old, he was already "middle-aged. He died at 39." He used that reference as a way to exhort the audience to become actively involved in vital issues today.
No issue in Jackson's speech held greater immediacy than a movement to give voting rights to felons who have served their time in the state of Alabama, a proposition put forth by State Rep. Yvonne Kennedy, D-Mobile.
Republican Gov. Bob Riley vetoed the bill despite a deal between some of his party's legislative leaders and the Alabama Legislative Black Caucus, made up of Democrats, to pass both the felon voting rights legislation supported by Democrats and a GOP-backed measure requiring voters to present identification at the polls. Riley signed the voter ID bill into law.
"Once people have been to prison and served time," Jackson said, his voice rising in the ballroom, "they should have the right to vote. Taxation without representation is tyranny!"
He exhorted the members of Omega Psi Phi to join forces with his organization, RainbowPUSH Coalition, in a march planned for Friday in Montgomery to dramatize support for returning voting rights to felons who served their sentences.
The measure will affect thousands of possible voters, he said.
"There are more blacks in jail in Alabama than in college," Jackson said. Nationwide, he said, there are 600,000 black students in col leges, while 900,000 languish in prison.
Slightly more than 3,000 voters made the difference in Alabama's last gubernatorial election, he reminded the audience.
He argued that society had created a "jail industrial complex -- first-class jails, second-class schools," with the state of Alabama spending money to export convicts to other states, far from their families.
"People say to me," he admitted, "'Reverend, we've got the right to vote. Talk about something else! David slew Goliath, but Goliath was not a eunuch. He had some boys! What we gained in 1965," he said, speaking of the Voting Rights Act, "is under constant attack."
A comprehensive health care bill and an amendment to ensure equality in education were other missions Jackson spoke of in his luncheon address.
The former high school football player said he had been challenged by Alabamians, black and white, on his criticism of the University of Alabama for not hiring a black football coach. He argued that Green Bay Packers assistant coach Sylvester Croom, who is black, had been better qualified in every regard than Mike Shula, who is white, but that decisions had been made "behind closed doors." Jackson decried the dearth of black football coaches and athletic directors throughout the nation.
The audience interacted with Jackson throughout the speech, calling out, "Come on, brother," or "Come on, frat," as they did when he gave what he called an unusual history lesson on the Fourth of July.
The original Independence Day, in which the colonies declared their freedom from England in 1776, "had nothing to do with us," Jackson explained.
The next Fourth of July of note, July 4, 1852, occurred when Frederick Douglass, an ex-slave and famous abolitionist, gave a speech on what independence day meant to a slave. Jackson recounted how Douglass, who had been invited to the White House, said: "'You invited me to speak when you're still selling my people.'"
The third Fourth of July was in 1863, when the Confederate port of Vicksburg, fell to the Union Army in Mississippi, while other Union soldiers were sending Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee into retreat after the Battle of Gettysburg 500 miles away in Pennsylvania.
"We won that battle," said Jackson, speaking of the Union Troops' Pennsylvania victory, and President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
The emancipation proclamation had already been given by Lincoln, he reminded the audience, and was enacted Jan. 1 of that year.
"Y'all know your history," Jackson said.
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