Jesse Jackson's legacy: How Long Islanders remember the civil rights icon

It was the late ‘80s and civil rights icon Jesse L. Jackson had launched the second of his two presidential bids.

In that atmosphere, Long Island attorney J. Stewart Moore remembers huddling with Jackson and church leaders in a Manhattan backroom during an NAACP event. There, Jackson, a reverend and powerful orator known for iconic phrases like "keep hope alive," began telling the group about how to captivate an audience.

That moment was emblematic of how Jackson, a disciple of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., inspired others through raising the national consciousness on such issues as voting rights, food insecurity and more in a way that reverberated on Long Island and beyond.

"What Jesse did on a national level helped us galvanize folks on the local level; no question about that," Moore said. 

As the civil rights giant is eulogized, Long Islanders are reflecting on Jackson's expansive legacy, which included two historic presidential runs, crusades for the poor and pushes for better health care and for companies to hire more people of color.

"He was there with a kind of clarion call, basically saying that those who have been left out should not be, and they have a right," said Elaine Gross, president and founder of the Syosset-based civil rights organization ERASE Racism. "Whether he was advocating around voting rights or job opportunities or running for president, there was this message that said, these are things worth fighting for ... trying to give people hope, and with that, we can do anything."

Nassau County Legis. Olena Nicks, who was born in Birmingham, Alabama, said Jackson’s civil rights legacy is not lost on her. As a child, she said her mother, 71, would cry when she took young Olena to the voting polls because she remembered a time when civil rights protesters that she knew had dogs sicced on them.

"Anytime she went to the polls or voted, she never took that lightly, what it was to be there and to have the right to do so, you know that it wasn't just a privilege that was given. It was something that had to be earned," Nicks (D-Uniondale) said.

She continues to be inspired by Jackson’s voting rights work and his push for unity, which on Long Island means finding "our way to align and work together and be able to survive together."

In 1984 and 1988, Jackson ran for president in campaigns that spoke to the importance of looking at all Americans and the need to help people who lacked opportunities, said Meena Bose, executive dean and director of the Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency at Hofstra University. At the time, Jackson faced the perception among many Democrats that he could not speak to all Americans.

Jackson’s campaigns, Bose said, "have kind of paved the way for the subsequent campaigns by people of color, including Barack Obama and his presidential campaign and Kamala Harris in her successful vice-presidential campaign in 2020."

Bose remembers meeting Jackson during his 1988 presidential campaign. At the time, she was a student at a Pennsylvania university and worked at her college's newspaper. She asked him to comment on a student demonstration over racial injustice and he expressed support for the protesters. 

Those moments illustrate a "commitment to people and to kind of building up ... support for activism," she said. 

Bishop E. Edward Robinson, of Breakthrough Chapel in Middle Island, started preaching at 12. Growing up, Jackson was his hero — a faith leader who showed that his spiritual principals expanded beyond the church and who "helped deliver a whole nation out of bondage."

"Faith and ministry are not just what we preach on Sunday, it's what we actualize on Monday, and Jesse Jackson was the epitome of that," he said in a phone interview.

He called Jackson’s death "bittersweet." Sweet, he said, in that Jackson can rest after a lifetime of labor. But scary in a sense that "we are losing a lot of our heroes" and it feels that the nation is moving backward in civil rights and human decency.

Jackson’s passing, he said, signals that "we have to pick up the baton, the sword and the shield."