"I knew Rev. Jackson was black as collard greens, Blue Magic grease, Sam Cooke, spades, and sweet tea. I knew he sounded like the reverends I grew up with. I knew he was different than them. In Black church culture, our reverends were the closest any of us could get to God-the respect was immediate, biblical, intense, immense."
"The first time I saw Jesse L. Jackson, he looked like the other preachers I later feared, resented, and still divinely revered. I was sitting too close to the boxy brown apartment living room television, watching his episode of A Different World. Dwayne Wayne, my favorite character, and the entire cast looked upon this man with tears in their eyes as he told them, and us, that we were "somebody," that hope was a discipline, not a feeling."
"My mother, Valerie J. Golden, a young organizer in Steinbeck Country, had once knocked doors in segregated Salinas with his name on her cinnamon lips, a Jesse Jackson '88 button pinned to her thin body, carrying campaign literature to homes that both welcomed and forbade her entrance. What she remembers most about his 1988 visit to Salinas is how brown the crowd was."
A young dark-skinned Black teenager questioning his sexuality played organ in a Southern Baptist church while grappling with fear of Black male preachers who condemned LGBTQ+ people despite claiming God's love for them. Watching Jesse Jackson on A Different World revealed a different kind of Black preacher—one whose message of hope and human worth transcended the conditional acceptance the author experienced in church. Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign resonated deeply, particularly in Salinas where the author's mother participated as a Rainbow Coalition organizer, witnessing Jackson's ability to unite diverse communities including Hispanic and LGBTQ+ advocates around shared hope and dignity.
Read at Advocate.com
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