Jesse Jackson was ‘direct connection to great civil rights era’, says Diane Abbott | Jesse Jackson
Diane Abbott has led the UK’s tribute to the African-American campaigner, saying Jesse Jackson was “a direct link to the great age of civil rights”.
Reverend Jackson was also closely linked to the struggle for racial equality in the United Kingdom; where he has been campaigning for decades to address institutional racism, as well as economic, health and criminal justice inequalities.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy, MP for Clapham and Brixton Hill and Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on African Reparations, paid tribute to the civil rights leader, whose death was announced on Tuesday at the age of 84. “His message is absolutely relevant today as we see the resurgence of racism in a way that we hope has been eradicated,” he said.
He added: “He was defending the (pan-African) tradition that we see from the likes of (Marcus) Garvey and (Kwame) Nkrumah, that international solidarity is the key to the liberation of peoples of African descent.”
This lifelong journey of solidarity brought Jackson to Manchester in 2007, to the packed Church of God of Prophecy in Moss Side.
The visit marked the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery, which fueled the city’s wealth and scarred the ancestors of many Black residents.
Jackson’s visit to Manchester (part of a nine-city “Equanomics” tour that also made stops in Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Leicester, Liverpool, London, Nottingham and Sheffield) reflected how economic, racial and social justice were inseparable for Jackson, and how communities of African descent in the United Kingdom and America were bound together by the common experience of Black minority status in the west.
Jackson has foregrounded conversations about the UK’s failure to recognize the Black contribution to the national story that have become mainstream in the UK – after the death of George Floyd in the US – to rapturous applause from Black communities across the country.
Jackson told his audience in Bristol: “We as Africans are creditors, not debtors. Our energy fueled the Industrial Revolution. We fought and died in the First World War and the Second World War.”
“In Bristol, you are the creditor. You are the debtor. Get a new perspective on yourself. You are the creditor, not the debtor. Today we are free, but we are not equal.”
Throughout his life, when Black British communities were shaken in the wake of riots, murders and systemic injustices, Jackson was an encouraging, inspirational presence, flying from the US to stand with affected communities. He was also there for the defining moments; He met the country’s first Black female MP, Diane Abbott, who remembers him as “very smart, warm and extremely charismatic.”
Two years before Abbott’s election, Jackson had called on Margaret Thatcher to abandon UK support for apartheid in South Africa after joining Abbott, Paul Boateng, Bernie Grant and Ken Livingstone in a Trafalgar Square protest to end apartheid and save Nelson Mandela, which drew 120,000 people.
He had long fought against the marginalization of Black history. When pan-African activist Akyaaba Addai-Sebo, then working for the Greater London Council, organized lectures and concerts that would sow the seeds for UK Black History Month, Jackson was among the participants, alongside activists Angela Davis, Winnie Mandela, Marcus Garvey Jr and musical greats Ray Charles, Burning Spear, Hugh Masekela and Max Roach.
Growing up in segregated South America, Dr. Jackson, who campaigned for civil rights and economic justice alongside Martin Luther King, was a lifelong campaigner for democratic participation.
In 2013, 50 years after King was assassinated, Jackson came to the UK to support Operation Black Vote, which he had supported for years, and spoke of his hope that the civil rights struggle in the US would continue to inspire campaigns for unity and equality in the UK.
She told the BBC: “When we got the right to vote in 1965, it wasn’t just Black people as was commonly thought; white women couldn’t serve on juries, 18-year-olds couldn’t vote, you couldn’t vote on campuses and you couldn’t vote bilingually, so we had to learn to go from surviving apart to living together.”
“Inclusion leads to growth, when there is growth everyone wins… Whoever plays football in this country, why are they so successful at football, Blacks, whites together, why are they so successful? Because when the playing field is level, when the rules are public and the goals are clear, when the referee is fair and the score is transparent, we do well.”
Following the news of Jackson’s death, the founder of Operation Black Vote, Lord Simon Woolley told the Voice:: “I was lucky enough to know him not only as a public figure but also as a mentor and collaborator. Together we worked to register tens of thousands of Black and Brown voters here in the UK. What started as inspiration turned into a friendship that has lasted almost 30 years.”
Ribeiro-Addy recalls being politely told by Woolley to complete a speech Jackson had given at an event in Nottingham more than 15 years ago that had flown by because he “really wanted to impress” Jackson.
He added: “I continued to work for Diane Abbott and met her a few more times; she came to us every time we had an election in the UK. She understood the importance of this. She stood on the shoulders of those who had come before and continued to show us that there was international solidarity for us to share because Black people know no borders.”
“He had the inspirational courage to run for president, he showed us that although we were outnumbered in the UK we could achieve things – and we did in terms of political representation, and he fought for that himself in the UK by coming and empowering people and showing them that if they could do it there, we could do it here.
“We saw these First four Black MPs elected in 1987 – and I now sit as an MP in the most diverse parliament this country has ever seen.”
