Transcript of M.E. Sprengelmeyer's interview with the Rev. Jesse Jackson

The Rocky

Published August 20, 2008 at midnight

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CHICAGO 1996

* Nominee: Bill Clinton

* Summary: President Clinton enjoyed a peaceful convention that wiped away bad memories from the tumultuous Chicago convention of 1968. He even got a boost from the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Civil Rights icon, who set aside his anger over a welfare reform bill and backed the president.

* Lessons: Set aside differences while the television cameras are on, deal with internal squabbles later — hopefully from inside the White House. Don’t forget those who cleared the path for Barack Obama to become the first black presidential nominee.

ADVICE

"Clearly, he must acknowledge this is a high point in America's struggle to make this a more perfect union. It's a time to heal the breach."

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, 66

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Transcript of interview with the Rev. Jesse Jackson by M.E. Sprengelmeyer of the Rocky Mountain News, June 16, 2008, at Rainbow/PUSH headquarters in Hyde Park, Chicago.

JACKSON: What do you want to talk about here?

Q: What we’re doing is we’re doing a series of stories about the conventions of the past 40 years and the lessons that we can learn from those campaigns and those conventions in particular that offer advice for the Democrats and the nominee, Barack Obama, going into the convention in Denver. So we’re going to be interested in any of the things that you learned through your experiences, in 1984, in 1988, and even your convention appearance in 1996 here in Chicago, I’m interested in, too — but any of those things that you learned during your experience that offer advice to what the Democrats should do or should not do — the good, the bad, things they can learn from. Every question is related to that vein.

JACKSON: First, let me give you some context of the emerging democracy in our country, and the emerging and changing Democratic Party.

Nineteen-fifty-four, the Supreme Court decision in Topeka, Kansas, the home of Barack’s mother’s birthplace, that decision ended 58 years of legal race supremacy. Race supremacy was legal.

When Rosa Parks was arrested, the bus driver was legally correct. He was morally wrong. But that decision made race supremacy illegal . . . The law changed, and we live in our faith, we live under the law . . .

That center jolt.

In ’55 Emmett Till was lynched. And those who didn’t understand what the ’54 decision meant, they felt the Emmett Till lynching. His mother brought him to Chicago, they were faced by an open casket, 100,000 people saw him lying in the casket. Emotionally it was not the same again. The biggest edition of Jet Magazine, black newspapers, there was a huge trauma around the trauma of this . . . This is August 28th.

December 1st, Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of the bus. I once asked of Mrs. Parks: “Given the fact that you were in jail, could have been eventually killed, why didn’t you just go to the back of the bus?” She said, “I thought about Emmett Till. I couldn’t go back.” His impact was that big. Dr. King emerges out of that.

Now here we are, an emerging, democratizing process, with a Supreme Court on the attack breaking the codes of race supremacists and not of law, and Dr. King goes there for litigation, then mass demonstration.

And in 1957, you have Little Rock test out the law.

Even our Republican president sends men, the troops to protect those . . .

And in 1960, Dr. King is jailed on the false basis for traffic violations, sent to the penitentiary. And while in jail, Richard Nixon would not reach out to him and John Kennedy did. Dr. King’s father was a Lincoln Republican, a Nixon supporter, and when Nixon did not reach out and Kennedy did, they then changed their vote.

Well, Kennedy won by that margin, he won by 113,000, less than one vote per precinct. So this is 1960. Very early politics.

Then the ’63 March on Washington, Dr. King lifting us above the pain of that season.

In 1964, the Democratic convention. Now that we’re into this kind of freedom emerging for us. Fannie Lou Hamer and a group, Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, said, “We deserve to be seated at the convention in Atlantic City.” An all-white Democratic Party said, “We are the legal guardians of the state’s franchise.” It was a challenge. The compromise . . . was that Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party could have two seats, but neither could be Fannie Lou Hamer. It was a great breakthrough at the ’64 convention of the legitimacy of outside protests influencing the inside process. The most dominant thing you know about that convention, two things: the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and Lyndon Johnson nominated. Those are the only two things. Everything else has paled into the ocean.

The next year, Jimmie Lee Jackson is shot in Green County, Alabama. The women decided to walk with his body from Greene County to Montgomery. They end up doing it through Selma. The killing took place in Greene County. That Sunday, the first Sunday in March, is when the Bloody Sunday took place. Just as the ’54 decision redefined America’s legal structure, the ’65 Bloody Sunday triggered an August 6, 1965, Voting Rights Act, which really was enforcing the 1865 states’ right to vote . . . We don’t have a constitutional right to vote yet. We have states’ rights to vote. Fifty states set the elections, even today . . .

That was a big breakthrough in ’65. Here’s what began to happen in that time. Not commonly known, someone spoke of some blacks being denied. White women couldn’t serve on juries. Farmers who didn’t pay poll taxes, couldn’t pay poll taxes, they couldn’t vote. Blacks couldn’t vote. That victory therefore helped white women, farmers, it began to break through class, race and gender.

By 1970, 18-year-olds didn’t have the right to vote. If you’re old enough to serve in Vietnam, you’re old enough to vote. We finally won that case. There was a great fear. There was one fear that blacks might vote, and my God, if these 18-year-olds, this student demonstrating long-hair-wearing crowd, if they can vote, wow, given there are more 18-year-olds than there are 81-year-olds . . . They never quite voted in their numbers, but they had the right and status in 1970.

The stage was set. In 1974 a case was filed of residency. If you go to the University of Colorado in Boulder and your parents live in New York or California, you used to have to vote absentee or go home to vote. That meant you could have big student rallies but not much voting. Then you go home to vote or a few vote absentee. But now, you have the right to vote where you go to school. Residency. So this year when Barack began to motivate campuses, whole campuses would register or re-register and go right down the street and join the caucus. That’s why the caucus dynamics were great, because students would actually use their franchise.

Next step was 1975, bilingual voting. If your first language was Spanish or Eastern European language or Native American or Russian, you vote in that language. This whole explosion of Latinos and all of that voting, Native Americans, is because you can vote in the language that you understand.

By 1984 and ’88, we made the case you had to lower the threshold for more participation and vote proportionally. It was a big, significant structural breakthrough by campaigns. Because if you’re in a situation where you vote but only the majority counts, it’s a tyranny of the majority. So you see you had to lower the threshold, broaden the base of participation, lower the threshold and have proportional representation. So if I get 45 percent, you get 55 percent, 55 does not equal 100, and 45 does not equal zero – 45 is 45 and 55 is 55. Proportionality. And to that extent, I, you know, raised $17 million and got 1,250 delegates in 1988.

By 1990, we’ll come back to that, the physical disabilities act, if you’re blind and need Braille, you could vote. You could, if you are physically disabled, you could use a wheelchair.

The point is from ’65 to 1990 we democratized and humanized the process and we broadened the base of participation, which now we see fully blossoming.

So 1984 when I ran as an African-American, it was a kind of culture shock phenomenon. You had not seen an African-American campaigning in Iowa before statewide. I remember large crowds would come to the schools to hear me speak or to look at me – almost a spectacle for some of them. I remember saying one night to some farmers in Iowa, you look through the TV lens and you see blacks in the corner of Chicago unemployed, you think they are lazy, they don’t want to work. They came to work. The jobs left. Sunbeam, and Zenith, and the stockyards. The jobs left. They really came to work. They see you through the TV lens, you’re not working, they think you’re getting a subsidy because you feel privileged. You get a subsidy because the big farmers, corporate farmers took your farm. You guys have an awful lot in common. The farmer said to me, “You know, we hear what you’re saying, and we think you’re right. We’re just not quite there yet . . .” And I heard what they were saying. And we shook hands, I embraced their children. I kissed their children. Their children 24 years later are there now because of a cultural transformation in our society, because America is becoming more mature, less anxious, less reaction on the question of race and gender.

We were told don’t campaign in Iowa because there are not enough blacks there. I felt if I did not campaign in Iowa, the campaign would not be legitimate. You had to test the issues in that state against all those odds, the money odds and all of that. And we came out of a pack of eight, maybe fourth. We kind of hung in there.

Q: Did you believe, sir? You know in 1984 – that’s something I’ve been waiting to ask you this whole time. In 1984, when the farmer said, “We might not be there yet. We might not be ready yet.” Did you believe that the country was ready at that time, or did you know there was a ceiling?

JACKSON: It was getting ready. It was a cultural ceiling. I mean, the idea . . . There were big articles, should a black run? Could a black run? If a black ran would it just take away votes from the liberal of the party? There were blacks and progressives arguing, and women and labor arguing, a black in the race gets in the way of our paradigm. There were all these . . . It shook up the process. I mean you had labor, that normally would have give their votes to a given candidate, now there were some in labor that said we want X. Others want Y. So labor had to make an adjustment. Women’s groups were kind of pro-civil rights. They said we’re civil rights but we’re not . . . it’s a dilemma. You had all these dynamics, so I made the case, reaching out, and said, “Well, if a woman can guide India, Indira Gandhi, if a woman can guide Israel, Golda Meir, if a woman can guide Britain, Thatcher, why shouldn’t a woman be on the ticket?” Even women who didn’t support my campaign, they liked that idea. They heard that message. Ferraro ends up being on the campaign. Some would think because we got 3 million votes, for fear I would demand to be on the ticket. They put a woman on the ticket. It was a victory for our struggle because opening up, removing gender and race barriers was our mission in the first place. During that process we put on 2 million new voters, we learned how to run a national campaign. We got some sense of the culture of Iowa and New Hampshire. New Hampshire . . . We learned to relate up those hills of New Hampshire and those fields of Iowa, and we were on the stage debating.

I mean to sit there with (Ernest) Hollings and (Walter) Mondale and (John) Glenn, people begin to get used to seeing a person of color on that stage debating these issues. I remember one night I was told by one of the groups, you know, “tomorrow night we’re having a debate on foreign policy. We’re glad you’re in, but if you don’t want to be in tomorrow night, you don’t have to be, because we’re going to debate foreign policy.” It was implied, of course, that I don’t know anything about foreign policy.

Q: You’re the city guy or whatever . . .

JACKSON: But I said, you know, we came here on foreign policy. Slavery was a foreign policy. It was our first trade, it was a bigger foreign and trade policy than was banking and insurance. I understand foreign policy maybe the best. “Oh, we don’t mean to offend you . . .” But we were going down these kinds of cultural shocks.

We argued that we should put on the agenda issues that were counterculture that traditional candidates would not touch. For example, I argued that we should free Mandela. Mandela at that time was on a terrorist list. He’s still on the terrorist list. They have not taken him off yet, by the way. The A.N.C. (African National Congress) was on the terrorist list. Our ally was the South African government, as opposed to the A.N.C. There was a memo that came out of the White House, written by Brzezinski, that said why the president should be really sensitive about keeping Africans and African-Americans apart, because America’s interest in Africa and African-Americans’ interest may be different. That would be a tension. Well, it was different, because we identify with every liberation movement from . . . Ghana down to South Africa, and our government was on the side of the Belgian, the French, the Portuguese, the Afrikaners. We were at odds . . . But in the end, our case of democratizing Africa, ending colonialism, was the right position to take, and that is now government policy. We argued that we should – I said in my speech in ’84 – we should free Mandala. Our kinship to South Africa is more than just race. That’s now our policy.

I argued there should be a two-state Middle East solution, not a no-talk policy. I took a lot of heat in ’84. That is now our national policy.

I argued that the influx of drugs in our country was corrupting our culture and triggering violence. I was considered like, non-presidential. Now that jobs-out, drugs-and-guns-in, is central to our policy in our crisis today.

We took on these counterculture issues. I went to coal miners in the hills of Appalachia and argued that poverty must not be seen just in color terms. Most poor people in America are not black, they’re white. They’re female and they’re young. Not black and brown. They’re white, female and young. Whether white, black or brown, hunger hurts. And so we had to take our case to the coal miners and the chemical workers in the hills and steelworkers in eastern Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

I was not getting many votes. I was cracking sheaths of culture. So by the time we got to the ’84 convention, because we had run this historic race, we were given a place to give a major address. The places where I scored relatively low during the campaign, where the journalists would say, “Here’s what he meant” and then capsulized me. The night they heard my entire address, if I could make my whole statement, our ratings were going to go up 50 percent, because people could actually hear. I knew then that in time, we could break through these ancient cultural barriers.

Well, by ’86, because we put on 2 million new voters, the Democrats regained the Senate at the height of Reagan’s popularity. North Carolina, Florida, Cranston in California, Breaux in Louisiana. We won seats they thought Democrats could not win. Those new voters changed all the dynamics. They were new, young, energetic. By ’88 the expectation level had changed.

Q: Did it change in your mind? Because here’s what I’m getting at. In 1984, did you enter the race saying, “This might take a few tries.” But at least in 1984 we’re going to get all these agenda issues that aren’t on the agenda on the agenda. We might not win . . .

JACKSON: In 1984, in some sense it was a protest for dignity. We were running a campaign in Chicago for Harold Washington to be mayor (in 1983). And we thought Harold could win. And all our liberal allies were with us. At the ’68 convention, it really exploded. They decried the shoot-to-kill order by Mayor Daley. They decried the riots at that time. They were upset that Dr. King and Robert Kennedy had been killed. So they were our liberal allies. We assumed that once we made a great break politically, they would be with us. But once we moved to self-determination, a number of our allies backed up. They wanted to represent us, not be our partners in progress. Some were hurt that Ted Kennedy and Mondale were coming to Chicago to support Jane Byrne and Daley. They said, “We’re running Mayor Washington.” We wrote a telegram, 100 people on it, said, “Please don’t, as a Democrat, don’t come into a Democratic primary against Harold Washington.” But Ted Kennedy and Mondale in effect said, but these are our friends. But we’re your friends, too. And so I said somebody has to run against these guys in the primary to break up us being taken for granted in this way . . .

And Andrew (Young) said, “No, I just finished serving a stint in Congress and the U.N., I’m going to run for mayor.” And Maynard Jackson, why don’t you run? “Well, I’ve just been serving as mayor. I’m going to go into the private sector and make some money for my family now.”

And so I said somebody has to run. In the meantime, the crowds around “Run Jesse run!” kept getting louder and louder. I couldn’t really back away, but (was) not really prepared, as people prepare to run these presidential campaigns that have fundraisers and all these kinds of things. I had none of the campaign infrastructure. We had (number unintelligible) ministers met together, and friends like Wellington Webb and Maxine Waters and Dick Hatcher said, it’s time to open up the process. We didn’t really believe we could win, except running was winning. Registering voters was winning. Bringing in new people was winning. Learning how to run a convention on the floor was winning. Having our own trailer was winning. Having access to the mic was winning. Having access to the national press corps was winning. Having our issues on the front line was winning. So we began to define winning in many long-range terms.

By ’88, our vote doubled to 7-plus million people. We beat Gore and Gephardt in Iowa in ’88. They were dismissive of that, but we beat ‘em, without advertising. In ’88, we raised $17 million and (won) 1,250 delegates. By the time we lowered the threshold down to 15 percent. And we defeated winner-take-all.

This year, for example, under winner-take-all, if Hillary wins Ohio, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and California, then she’s the winner. Under proportionality, where with the lower threshold, you can run by districts. It gives the least-funded people in our case a chance. In the case of Barack, under winner-take-all he would have lost. Under proportionality, he got delegates all over the place. It allowed a lot of people to be empowered and franchised all around the country. It’s one of the legacies of the ’88 campaign. In the meantime, we kept registering voters, so by 1992 and 1996, Bush and Dole got more white votes than Clinton. Clinton got more white and rainbow votes than they got and won. His base was broader, and that’s how he won, because we had brought in the previously disenfranchised into the process. And when they could vote, they could determine the president.

And then in 2000, were it not for the discounting of the votes and the sheer roguery in Florida and in Ohio, we had set the pace for the next half-century of voting. We would have won in 2000, 2004. But these dynamics all stemmed from the ’54 Supreme Court legal decision . . . and the ’65 Voting Rights Act, and 25 years after, its fulfillment.

So, when I saw Hillary and Barack campaigning in Mississippi, the state where Emmett Till was lynched, the state where (Michael) Schwerner, (Andrew) Goodman and (James) Chaney were killed, the state where Medgar Evers was killed, where (James) Meredith went to school with the National Guard, and in that state saw whites voting for a black to be president, and saw men voting for a woman to be president, Barack and Hillary are now the conduits through which a new and better and more mature America is expressing itself. They are not the causes of this. Barack and Hillary have run the last leg of a 54-year marathon, tag-team race. From Brown in Topeka, Kansas, in ’54; Rosa Parks and Dr. King in ’55; to Little Rock in 1957; to the student sit-ins in 1960; the March on Washington in 1963; the ’64 public commission bill; the ’65 Voting Rights Act, the subsequent acts. Barack and Hillary are running the last lap of a 54-year tag-team race.

You could almost put it: to that extent, this has been a victory for Barack and his family because they have run a very astute, smart, well-thought-through campaign. It was a victory for the civil rights struggle because the fruits of our labors have produced the platform from which he could be launched and win.

And it’s a victory for America. This is a redemptive moment for America. It’s a transformative moment. America feels better about itself as overcoming the pain of its past. The world is looking at us differently. You know, while our memories are strong and sometimes painful, our dreams and our hopes are stronger than our memories. So one sees this year this redemption process taking place. And some people are voting above their own fears, giving peace a chance and keeping hope alive.

And lastly, to put it another way, Aug. 28, 1955, Emmett Till lynched. A very low moment in American history; really state-sanctioned terror. Aug. 28, 1963, Dr. King speaks in Washington about a dream, a dream beyond the predicament of that day, to end apartheid . . . Aug. 28, 2008, Barack will be nominated in Denver, nominee of the Democratic Party for the presidency. What a growth in a country.

Aug. 28, 1965, to Aug. 28, 1963, to Aug. 28, 2008, it shows, it’s a great statement for the growth of our nation.

Q: What does he have to say that night? When he gets up there and accepts the nomination on that historic day? On Aug. 28 or 29 he might make the speech. What does he need to say to America, either to acknowledge all those steps that have come to put him where he is or to put the country where it is? What does he need to say?

JACKSON: Well, you know, clearly he must acknowledge this is a high point in America’s struggle to make this a more perfect union. It’s the time to heal the breach. Americans, we can make dreams, we can defy odds, that’s what makes America great. And here we are at the moment of promise. Dr. King said, “I have been to the mountaintop . . .” “I may not get there . . .” “We as a people will get to the promised land . . .” This is part of that promise, where lions and lambs, black, white and brown, find common ground. And we should seize this moment, transformative moment, to turn in a new direction. Not just a new complexion, but a new direction.

When the Broncos play the Jets, it’s not skin color, it’s uniform color. It’s blue and orange vs. green and white. We’re getting there. I use that analogy because the athletic arena has done so much to acculturate us. You know, being able to play football together and fill a stadium together, March Madness in basketball, and the Super Bowl game and Olympic games. We all, day after day, pulling for our teams. You know, it’s the Broncos vs. Jets, or basketball team vs. basketball team. So we can coach together, we can play quarterback together and go to school together. More of us than ever are working together and going to school together and serving in war together. There’s unfinished business. I am not at all romantic about the structural inequality and the gaps yet to be closed, and the healing that must take place, but we’re getting there.

I think that what Barack must show is that from the vantage point of that mountaintop, how to get all of us over into that promised land, because in some sense, as we grow now, as Americans we are all free, we’re (still) unequal. The hedge funds and pockets of wealth beyond the clouds, beyond the stratosphere up here. A sinking middle class and expanding base of poverty among working poor people. Four-dollar-gallon gas, four-dollar-gallon of milk, something is missing in the process now. Here we are now all free, Native American, Latino, black, white, brown, we’re all free. But jobs and industry and investment, out. And drugs and guns, in. We’ve lost 4,000 soldiers plus in Iraq in four years. We lose 30,000 Americans at home a year to gun violence, as in Columbine, as in Virginia Tech, as in NIU . . . We’ve now made it legal again to buy AK-47s, Uzis, M-16s, semi-automatic weapons. Here we are freer, but less secure. Taxes up, services down. First-class jails, second-class schools. And so now is the time to move toward a healthier, more inclusive, more secure America.

We didn’t know how good baseball could be until everybody could play. We didn’t know how good football could be until everybody could play. We didn’t stand a chance of winning in the Olympics until everybody could run. In our politics, our best days are in front of us if we now choose direction over complexion, and choose the issue of shared economic security and peace over insecurity and war. Then a great day awaits us as a nation.

Q: When you talked about the colors of the uniforms, I was thinking about times when the party, the blue party, the Democrats, or the Republican Party, when they have disagreements on their team, but they still have to pull together. In 1996, when you made the speech about the mountaintops and the valley between the mountaintops, it was just a few weeks after President Clinton had signed the welfare reform bill that created a lot of disagreement within the team of the Democrats. Is there any lesson to be learned from that 1996 convention here in this city where, even people who had disagreements together could come together. Is there a lesson from that convention here?

JACKSON: Well, within the party, you must move forward by hope and healing and reconciliation, and not backward by fear, because the price of division is very expensive. A crack in the bow can sink the ship. That’s how important it was after Barack and Hillary had run such a close campaign, they have to even now keep one eye on competition for the position and one eye on reconciliation, because the Barack/Hillary game was a playoff game. The Super Bowl is in November. And they must embrace, and embrace fervently . . . And if they do we will win. If they don’t, we won’t.

In 1968 Humphrey and Johnson couldn’t reconcile over the Vietnam War question . . . It hurt because Dr. King was dead, Robert Kennedy was dead, (some) felt Humphrey didn’t pull out early enough and support the anti-war effort. The Johnson forces thought he never should have pulled out. That was a crack. It never got healed. And Nixon went down the middle.

In 1980, Carter and Kennedy were in a heated contest. And in the end Carter prevailed. Kennedy in New York could not embrace him fervently. And Reagan emerged. They lost.

In 1960, in a very heated contest with Johnson and Kennedy, almost a Civil War campaign, Johnson representing the south and Kennedy representing the north, they made a big decision to get ahead, not get even, get ahead not even. They reconciled and formed a ticket. And even with the Johnson-Kennedy combination, the Kennedy-Johnson combination, they won by 113,000 votes.

So when you close ranks, the fruits come in multiples and are sweet. If you don’t, the fruits are sparing, are few and bitter.

Q: “Disagreements among Democrats in the spring can lead to Reagan in the fall . . .” Phrases along those lines you’ve always warned about. If you can think to the three conventions that we’re focusing a little bit on, 1984, 1988 and 1996, were there specific things that happened surrounding the conventions that – mistakes that either the party made or that happened at the convention – that you think that the Democrats need to avoid going into this summer’s convention?

JACKSON: In 1984, the Democrats did a good thing. They made room for new people. Now, in reaction to the Rainbow/progressive interest, Democrats formed a DLC (Democratic Leadership Council) in reaction to the DNC. And the DLC thought that too many blacks, Latinos and labor was a threat, because they wanted to focus on retrieving white males. The DLC is a privatized form of DNC, but you get there by invitation, not election. So some Democrats formed DLC. It was well-funded. Their theory was to get Democrats they had lost to Reagan, not gain new Democrats. They went backwards. And most of them ultimately got beat. They went with the past. We had to look to the future. That was a kind of ideological split. We found ways to work together, but even after Ron Brown became DNC chair, the DLC would have a meeting the same time as DNC, just to compete with it. It became, you know, a different arm of the party. That kind of split in resources obviously was problematic. We survived it.

In ’88, the party made further adjustments to include an expansion because so many of them won in ’86. Our campaign therefore became expansive, not divisive. The rap was, our effort would make it divisive. We became expansive and inclusive became the way to win.

This year, what one sees, is the blossoming of trees planted in ’84 and ’88.

A new Middle East policy now . . . Even Bush and Condoleezza Rice, everybody supports a two-state solution. That came out of the ’84/’88 campaign. Everybody now honors Mandela, supports a new South Africa. That comes out of the ’84/’88 campaign. Putting a woman on the ticket. That came out of the ’84 campaign. A woman can run for president and not have to argue a bunch of gender questions about qualifications. A black running for presidency, that comes out of the ’84/’88 campaign. And now one will win the nomination.

All these inclusive dynamics we see taking place have their roots in perhaps three great movements: the 1954 Supreme Court decision which changed everything legally; the 1965 right to vote – it took 25 years to unravel it so it would be even more inclusive and not limiting; the ’84/’88 campaigns, which defined the participation process.

Q: Do you see a danger for the Democrats, given the tough election that we’ve had and some of the things that happened in the closing, maybe month and a half of the race? Do we see any dangers for the Democrats going into Denver?

JACKSON: The flip side of crisis is opportunity. And the Hillary forces must be dealt with very sensitively. They got 18 million votes. Many of them are very passionate about their support for Hillary as a women’s rights issue. They connect themselves to Susan B. Anthony, the legacy of women emancipation . . . women’s participation . . .

(After Sen. Clinton’s defeat) There’s a certain amount of hurt there. I think we must use this season to overcome the hurt with healing and hope and reconciliation, and meaningful conversation to work out remaining unfinished business, because the alternative would be to elect a president who would be anti-Title IX . . . The alternative would be McCain (who supports continuation of the occupation of Iraq). The alternative would be to pursue economic policy that bankrupted our country. When Bush came in in the year 2000, we were in a (budget) surplus, the largest in history. Now America has the largest debt and deficit we’ve ever known.

So the price we pay for not reconciling, it would be a disaster.

Q: I wonder if you can talk a little specifically about the difficult speech you did have to make in 1996, the speech that talked about Bill Clinton, the president, being the best option even despite disagreements. The 1996 speech you made on the heels of the welfare reform measure. My understanding was it was a speech to pull together your coalition even with an imperfect choice.

JACKSON: That’s right. It was an imperfect choice . . . You had – there was no alternative. There was a radical right wing causing civil rights, social justice, workers rights issues. And so they had to have the capacity to fight for internal healing while fighting for external changes. And I felt that the value of keeping the party together was worth the hit that we took. We can agree to disagree, but there’s a higher prize here.

And this year there are those who may be despondent that their wing or their candidate lost a primary. But there is a higher prize. There were Barack supporters who said if Hillary wins, they will not support her. There were Hillary supporters who said if Barack wins, they will not support him. That’s misguided talk. The commitment was, at the very beginning was, one of us will win, the rest of us will lose. The losers of us must support the winner of us. The paradox is, the irony is, should I say, is that the loser in Denver will determine the winner in November.

The loser in Denver will determine the winner in November, because if the loser does not embrace the winner enthusiastically in Denver, the winner can’t win in November. That’s why one must court very sensitively the voters of the candidates that lost, because their enthusiasm, or lack thereof, will determine the outcome in November.

And when the enthusiasm was low in ’68, that enabled Nixon to win. When it was low in 1980, and a lot of Democrats became Reagan Democrats, we lost. So we should learn from those two lessons the price we pay . . . In these big races, the margins are so tight until every vote and everybody matters, and so the order of the day is reconciliation.

Q: When Barack Obama finally passed that magic number and made that speech . . . When he made the speech after he crossed the number he needed for the nomination, what was going through your mind?

JACKSON: I wish Dr. King and Medgar Evers could have been there. I was in Tanzania, east Africa, not far from the land of his father’s birth, at an African/African-American summit conference. To see people in Africa . . . You see Africans and African-Americans rejoice in Africa, as we set to reconcile Africans and African-Americans, and Africa and America.

The fact that within his body flows the blood of two continents. Within his body is the DNA of reconciliation. That is the key to the kingdom. It is the healing, closing the gap . . .

I just took a deep breath after I cried, because I knew it was the last lap of a 54-year race.

I wanted to make sure the media saw this, not just as a three-year race with a phenomenal guy, but a 54-year race with a phenomenal guy.

I mean, like all races, usually the last, the anchor guy, the last runner is a strong, fast runner. He is a strong, fast runner in a 54-year marathon, and one can not for one day separate the victories of Bradley in Los Angeles, the victories of (Richard) Hatcher and (Carl) Stokes in ’68 in Gary and Cleveland, the victory of Wellington Webb and (Federico) Peña, the black-Hispanic coalition in Denver. That’s such a big deal; the 100 largest cities are now majority black and brown. There are now 90 congressional districts with 100,000 to 140,000 Latinos. There are 85 districts with 140,000 blacks. There are 40 districts with majority black and brown.

I’m trying to get young blacks to learn to speak Spanish. Young Latinos have learned to speak English. We must become at least bilingual as well as being bicultural because the very nature of the world in which we live, in terms of technology, English is a minority language in our hemisphere. Two-thirds of our neighbors speak Spanish. Another quarter-billion speak Portuguese in Brazil. So we must begin to expand our base of language and culture, and do a difficult thing. For us we’ve learned to survive apart. We must now learn to live together. We survive behind our walls. Physical walls that were raised. Cultural walls . . . Now we must build bridges rather than walls, and that becomes the great challenge and the great opportunity of our nation.

Q: I did see you when I was a young high school journalist, 1984, at Five Points in Albuquerque, N.M. I think you had just come from Mexico. You had just come from an overseas trip. You came there with the longest press chase crew I had ever seen. And here I was with my little notebook . . .

JACKSON: You still do . . .

Q: I’m very old-school. They tease me on this. But that’s one of my big memories. Do you have some advice for Hillary Rodham Clinton? I asked you about advice for Barack Obama, but do you have any advice for her?

JACKSON: Hillary has an even greater burden to bear. It’s not difficult for the winner to reach out because they feel a sense of buoyancy . . .

(NOTE: At the end of one tape, Rev. Jackson was speaking about the winning candidate having to recognize the disappointment of Sen. Clinton’s followers, so that “their disaffection does not become defection.”)

JACKSON: So it is more difficult to lift up the hurt and salute the winners. And yet, the hurt have in their hands the numbers the winner needs from Denver to win in November . . .

It (was) one Democratic Party a year ago. It will be a new Democratic Party from Denver onto November. And that party must be one big tent party built from all of its parts.

Q: How did you do that in ’84 and ’88, because, like Hillary Rodham Clinton, you had a group of people who invested their whole hearts in this. It was all colors, it was a whole movement of the forgotten people. They all came to you. You were in that same boat. How did you do that?

JACKSON: I defined what their interests were, what the alternatives were, and showed them by my own example that their interest was to continue to expand and go forward, not to defect, nor withdraw, and they had to go forward by hope and by healing and by addition, and not by our fears or by our pain.

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