Chasing Jesse Jackson

When I moved to Greenville at the age of 23 to work for the daily newspaper, I was greener than green. Because of that I had to work the weekend cops beat, which meant giving up my Saturday and Sunday evenings to sit in the office and listen to the police scanner and respond to breaking news.

And sometimes, if there wasn’t breaking news.

Which is what happened when I was barely a week into the job, and my editor that night (Bob Paslay) told me Jesse Jackson was in town and it was birthday and I needed to go over to his mother’s house to do a story. Now, I knew who Jesse Jackson was. I remembered him running for president twice when I was still in short pants. I remembered watching him read Green Eggs and Ham on Saturday Night Live as if he was addressing the United Nations on human rights issues.

None of that really would help me in a story. So, I asked Bob if there was anything in particular, I should focus on? I mean this was party at his mother’s house…. how do you write about a birthday party? Bob, who I would come to know had a strange sense of humor, told me to use this question, “with the Poinsett Hotel about to reopen, do you remember spitting in people’s drinks?”

That was my charge. I was 23. I drove into the night.

Needless to say, I didn’t ask that question, and after a few hours, I came back and delivered a very rote article about Jesse reflecting on how sports were a great unifier and how the South had benefited from professional sports in race relations. Looking back, it was a nice angle, and one that I rarely if ever saw him use again.

However, it was not THE STORY I should have wrote. Below is what I wish I wrote, but never did. This is the article I should have done by tapping into my Magazine Journalism degree from Syracuse University.

Chasing Jesse Jackson

I drove with one hand on the wheel of my red Ford with a mashed-up door and the other holding the MapBook. For those who don’t remember the days before you carried a phone that also gave you directions, you used a MapBook to find your way around by using a grid system to pinpoint a location. The only problem is the MapBook didn’t you give street addresses, so you found the street drove down it and hoped for the best.

The address I was looking for was the home of Jesse Jackson’s mother. The reason? It was her son’s birthday, and she was holding a party. Why was I going to his birthday? I was a brand-new reporter at the Greenville News, and it was a Saturday night, and I was the only person available. Such is fate and life. As a I drove down the street of modest ranch homes that didn’t appear to have numbers on them in a city I barely knew (I had been a resident of Greenville for roughly two weeks), I wondered how I would find the party. Luckily, I had not spent every Saturday at home for my formative years and saw the tell-tales signs of an epic event unfolding. There was one house with a driveway full of cars and dozens more out front and then snaking out into the neighborhood. I parked my car like a battered caboose off one of these lines, and grabbed my notebook, a pen and a handheld tape recorder – the tools of the trade of my profession in the year 2000.

Now, I wish I could remember how I got into the house. I’m sure I introduced myself to someone as a reporter with the Greenville News but how is a mystery. Who? No idea.

But someone took me down the steps into the finished basement to talk with him. Great. A sit-down interview in a room with pictures and awards on the wood-paneled walls honoring Jackson, who was sitting in the corner talking to someone. It was not another reporter (it appears I was the only one), but it was obviously someone Jesse knew because he was laughing and smiling and completely at ease. Not that I should have been surprised, he was human after all, but all of my knowledge of Jackson came from soundbites and speeches. He was an orator of the highest level, but here he was having a conversation -- a back and forth on something that I was not privy to.  As he talked, I decided to scope out more of the room. As noted, it was filled with mementos of his life, but then I saw an album cover framed and what appeared to be a gold record. Maybe a spoken word speech? I knew those were a thing, but the cover didn’t seem political. It was a man in profile peering through some blinds. It looked a lot like Jesse, but it wasn’t him. Or was it? As if reading my mind, someone else at the downstairs party told me that it was Jesse’s younger brother, Chuck, who had been a pretty successful musician in the 1970s.  Before I could process more of this, someone called me over to Jesse. He was standing and as I approached, I swear he got taller with every step I took. I was about 6 foot 1 at the time, but Jesse dwarfed me.

We started the interview and I asked blasé questions about being home in Greenville. I couldn’t help but wonder how many interviews he had given over his career. At this point, he had been in public life going on 40 years. That didn’t even include his years as a star athlete at Sterling High School. (note, I didn’t know anything about Sterling or his sports career that evening --- just pointing out that being interviewed by reporters had been part of his life for a long time even before most of America knew his name). Just as I felt I was getting something good, someone tapped Jesse and he said he had to go upstairs and talk to someone else, but not to leave yet. He wanted to talk more.

And for the next hour or two that became my life of sorts. I would follow Jesse into a room, watch him talk, get to ask him a question or two and then he would be whisked off to talk to someone else. I do not write this with ill-will at all. It is more with mystifying awe. Here was everyone from his life in Greenville trying to talk to him and get a few minutes of his time, but he was trying – as best as he could – to still talk to me. He handled it all with grace and panache. I realized though this was old hat to him.

Wherever he went this had to be the routine of his mornings, days and evenings. Someone always seeking him out. For a quote. For a donation. For a prayer. For a request. The best my still developing brain could muster was that his life was something akin to Marlon Brando in The Godfather. He just wanted to sit down and enjoy the day, but there was always business to attend to. Always business to attend to.

At some point, Jesse was able to sit down and eat. While I was a reporter, I was not an ogre. I could let the man eat without me in his face so I retreated to the kitchen where I could only assume most of the meal had been made. Ok, not assume, this was definitely home cooked and by the looks of the pots and pans, in that kitchen.

Now I should note I was a very serious reporter and taking anything from a person I was interviewing was a serious breach of journalism etiquette. That includes home-cooked food prepared for a man who twice ran for President of these United States. And you know what is a serious breach of Southern etiquette? Turning down food in someone’s house. My sincerest apologies for that one to this day. Yet, it was while in the kitchen that I made my greatest revelation of the evening. I met Jesse’s mother. She handed me the banana pudding she had made herself with a smile that said journalism etiquette or not, eat the banana pudding.

It was wonderful.

But now I had to make small talk with Jesse’s mother, Helen. I was bad at small talk even with people I knew, but I knew nothing of her story or background, and I knew I couldn’t ask her for her banana pudding recipe. So I went with the brilliant, “how proud are you of your son?”

She gave the perfect answer.

“I’m proud of all my children.”

Sliding back to my just created memory of the gold record, I made it sound like I could speak from knowledge that one of her other children was a musician. That got a broad smile from her, and I think it opened her up enough to me to point me toward a framed letter above the wall-mounted telephone. She asked me to read the note. It was from then Vice President Al Gore addressed her to and wishing her congratulations on something. I remarked that it was cool that Al Gore, who was then in a heated race for the presidency against George W. Bush, had written her a letter. She deadpanned that Al Gore had misspelled her name and then she laughed. Hard. Jesse Jackson’s mother had dunked on Al Gore. Not just with her laughter, but that in a house full of monuments to her children – she saved the one for herself that contained a typo and she found that funny. From that day forward, Helen Jackson was one cool lady in my book.

But just as we started laughing, we were called back into the dining room. It was time for Jesse to blow out the candles on his birthday cake. Jokes streaked across the room.

“Hey Jesse, how old are you?”

“I’m not saying.”

“He’s 59.”

“No, I’m four over the speed limit.”

“Jesse, the speed limit’s 65 now.”

“Will you just sing happy birthday.”

And Happy Birthday was sung. I had my story. I would interview Jesse Jackson several more times over the years. These were always formal meetings, and he wore his public face each time. I doubt he remembered that birthday party in 2000 and I never brought it up. Never seemed appropriate. He likely never read the story that was printed in the Greenville News the next day.

But Jesse Jackson has passed, and another part of history gets written.