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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Last week on the show we did a Black History Month segment appropriate for this presidential election year. We looked back on the first campaign of an African American for the nomination for president from the major US political party. It was Shirley Chisholm's campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1972.

Today we look back to what we might consider the next major chapter in that story, Rev. Jesse Jackson's campaigns for the Democratic nomination in 1984 and 1988, which got much further than Congresswoman Chisholm's did. In fact, in that 1988 campaign, Reverend Jackson came in second in the number of delegates earned in the Democratic primaries.

That means he got more delegates than Al Gore, who also ran that year. It means he got more delegates than Joe Biden, who also ran that year. In '84, Jackson had come in third behind Walter Mondale and Gary Hart but still won hundreds of delegates and a speaking slot at the Democratic Convention.

Rev. Jesse Jackson: This is not a perfect party. We are not a perfect people. Yet we are called to a perfect mission. Our mission to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to house the homeless, to teach the illiterate, to provide jobs for the jobless, and to choose the human race over the nuclear race.

Brian Lehrer: Rev. Jesse Jackson at the 1984 Democratic National Convention. We'll hear at least one more clip as we go, as we welcome now Clarence Lusane, Director of the International Affairs Program at Howard University, past chair of the Political Science Department there, and author of many books, including The Black History of the White House. Dr. Lusane worked on both in 1984 and '88 Jesse Jackson campaigns. Dr. Lusane, we really appreciate you joining us for this. Welcome to WNYC.

Clarence Lusane: Thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, as we did with our Shirley Chisholm segment last week, you're invited to add some oral history to this segment. We'll have time for a few calls. Is anybody listening right now who remembers voting for Jesse Jackson in either the 1984 or 1988 Democratic primaries? Call in and say why. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

You would have been choosing Jackson over Walter Mondale and Gary Hart in '84, over Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, Joe Biden, and others in '88, why did you or what was the importance of his candidacy to you or to the nation, as you remember it? Oral history, welcome here. If you voted for Jesse Jackson in 1984 or '88, 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. Dr. Lusane, unlike Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson was not in elected office when he launched his run for the presidency for 1984. Who was Jesse Jackson to America or the Democratic Party at that time?

Clarence Lusane: Jesse Jackson had come out of and was still part of the civil rights movement. He had been a lieutenant to Reverend King. He had moved to Chicago and started his own operation after Dr. King was assassinated, Operation Breadbasket, which was a national civil rights organization pretty much known for its winning covenants, as Jesse called them, which were agreements by corporations that worked in Black communities that they would invest in those communities, they would hire people from those communities. On that issue and then on a wider range of peace and social justice issues, Jesse had built his name.

The first kind of push for Jackson to run actually came in the 1970s with an organization and a movement called the National Black Political Assembly. In 1972, it had an assembly and it pushed for a candidate that would not be either Democrat or Republican. Jesse's name came up, but Jesse, for various reasons, declined to do it. Of course, that was the year Shirley Chisholm was running, and so that also complicated issues.

By the time we get to the '80s and Ronald Reagan gets elected, there's a severe pushback by the Black community because of the sense that Reagan was against civil rights. He was a state's rights kind of candidate. Increasingly there was a demand that the Democrats have a stronger stance, and when that didn't happen, then you began to get a call for a Black candidate. Then Jesse's name rose to the top of that.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take our first oral history call. Ora in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi Ora.

Ora: Good morning. I voted for Jesse in 1984 and I also ran a program in 1984 called Churches United for Voter Registration that included about 10 churches between Brooklyn and Manhattan. I can name the churches if you have time. Then in 1988, I had a four-year-old daughter, whom I took into the voting booth with me so that she could pull the lever for Jesse Jackson.

Brian Lehrer: What was the importance of him to you?

Ora: The importance was that, as an African-American, as someone who was at the end of the civil rights movement was to continue the struggle that my parents and ancestors had begun to gain equal rights in this country and the right to vote. I had a mother who had to pay poll taxes in Montgomery in order to register to vote. Voting has always been high on our priority list as a family.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Ora. Thank you very much. More oral history. Rachel in Middlebury, Connecticut. You're on WNYC. Hi, Rachel.

Rachel: Thanks for having me. I just want to share a memory that I had when I was 21 and I was living in San Francisco in a house with a bunch of my friends, and we were so excited to support Jesse Jackson. We went to downtown San Francisco and heard him speak and we were just crying with joy and hope.

Brian Lehrer: Hope for what? Can you put it into words in the context of that year, '84?

Rachel: It felt like a time of great change and great looking forward to things being better when we lived in Oakland, and it just was rough for a lot of people and we wanted there to be services and-

Brian Lehrer: Progress.

Brian Lehrer: -I lost my train of thought. We wanted there to be, people to not be homeless. We wanted people to have equal opportunities. We wanted people to be empowered. We wanted people to have jobs. We wanted to stop wars. It just felt like it could happen.

Brian Lehrer: Rachel, thank you so much. I think that kind of sets up this other clip we have of Reverend Jackson from his 1984 convention speech saying who he believed he was representing.

Rev. Jesse Jackson: My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the despised. They are restless and seek relief. They have voted in record numbers. They have invested the faith, hope, and trust that they have in us. The Democratic Party must send them a signal that we care. I pledge my best not to let them down.

Brian Lehrer: Rev. Jesse Jackson in his 1984 Democratic Convention speech. Dr. Lusane, we also have to acknowledge when we talk about '84, the controversy, which was very much an issue here in New York when Jackson got caught referring to New York as "Hymietown" because there were so many Jews in the city. He apologized for what he called the thoughtless remark that was wrong but wasn't intended to be mean or bigoted.

He said, some Jewish leaders and voters accepted the apology in the context of a long working relationship, some did not. It haunted him through the '88 campaign too. My question to you is how do you think that affected his relationship with Mondale in '84 when that happened or his influence on the party nationally?

Clarence Lusane: Jackson admitted, as you indicated, that it was a mistake and he, as you said, apologized for it. I think the broader context is that, as your callers indicated, is that Jackson was trying to build a broad coalition because it was felt that the Democratic Party at the time was pretty much focused on-- had a very narrow focus.

Jackson which

had been unexpected for a Black candidate, there was a sense that he would just only focus on issues related to civil rights, but he talked about the environment, he talked about workers' rights, he talked about a coalition that not only would include Black people, but Native Americans, Latinos, Jews, Arab Americans across the board. Even though that has happened in campaigns, candidates will often say something that's really wrong, but Jackson tried to balance that with both his experience in terms of leading up to that, as well as in the platform that he put forth both in '84 and '88.

Like your caller, I actually lived in Oakland in '83 and '84, so I was out there for the convention. It was very much, as the speaker said, that there was a hope that because Jackson was targeting issues that the candidates generally did not that there was a way in which the Democratic Party could become more progressive.

Brian: More oral history. Jonathan in Sunset Park, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jonathan.

Jonathan: Hello. Sorry. Just eating my breakfast.

Brian: [unintelligible 00:11:17].

Jonathan: I am. I was a student at Columbia in 1984, and I was working on voter registration. Mostly, we would go out into Harlem and try to register people. It was a good experience. People were just very excited about the chance to be able to vote for Jesse Jackson. A lot of them had not voted since JFK or something. I did that.

Then in 1988, I was living in San Francisco and I was volunteering on the Jackson campaign. It was a great experience because being in this room with all these people, it was the Jews for Jackson and the Arabs for Jackson were right there with each other and Latino, the Nations, and gay people, and all of this. I think that was really what he was so much about was trying to bring people together and reaching out to all these different communities.

As far as that thing about the "Hymietown", I remember at one point, there was a woman who called into the campaign, and she was not Jewish, but she had Jewish friends, and she was concerned about this. I got on the phone and was talking to her and telling her like, "That was something that was unfortunate, but people sometimes say things that are not proper, or not correct, or that we don't like, but you have to look at the big picture of what was he talking about?" He was talking about including people. I just remembered there being this great experience of just working together with this very diverse group of people who were all focused on this guy.

Brian: Jonathan thank you. Thank you very much. Enjoy the rest of your breakfast.

Jonathan: Thanks.

Brian: Dr. Lusane, in '88, Jackson came in a strong second in delegates, around 30% of delegates to around 40% for the nominee, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. What changed between '84 and '88 that Jackson got about 700 more delegates, had so much more success?

Clarence Lusane: That's a really important question. The '84 campaign really was grassroots generated. The year before in 1983 at the 20th anniversary of the March on Washington, the March in '63 where King delivered his I Have a Dream speech, there was a big commemoration, but it was also a call to organize and to mobilize.

One of the major themes that came from that event was Run Jesse Run. There was a ground-up pressure because most of the Black leadership at the time in '83 and '84, civil rights leadership, Black elected officials were all backing Mondale or some other Democrat. They saw Jesse as an upstart, but Jesse had support from Black churches, he had support from Black community organizations.

That changed in '88. When Jesse ran in '88, virtually, the entire Black leadership from the Congressional Black Caucus members to Black mayors, to Black civil rights leaders all backed Jackson in that period. He had a very different energy in 1988. He had the grassroots as well as what some would call the rooftops behind him. He won 11 states which was virtually unheard of, 7 million votes. He had a major impact on the convention and on the platform in that year. It was a very different kind of environment in '88.

Brian: Clarence Lusane, director of the International Affairs Program at Howard University, past chair of the Political Science Department there, and author of many books, including The Black History of the White House, and Dr. Lusane worked on both the '84 and '88 Jesse Jackson campaigns.

Listeners, thank you for your oral history calls in this final. We got an extra one in because we've been doing them on Thursdays and it's leap year. We had five Thursdays, final Black History Month segment for this presidential election year. Dr. Lusane, thanks so much.

Clarence Lusane: Thank you so much. Have a good day.

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