FLASH
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From the balcony of Memphis to American politics, the journey of one of the key figures of the civil rights movement
The bullet fired by James Earl Ray from an opposite window hit Martin Luther King, who was on the balcony of Room 306 of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, on April 4, 1968, in both the jaw and collarbone. Next to him was a young civil rights activist, Jesse Jackson, who would later recall those dramatic moments: “The police were coming at us with their guns drawn. I remember crawling up the stairs. There was blood everywhere and a photographer filled a glass with it.”
King and Jackson had joined forces in a decade-long battle to end the legacy of slavery, racial discrimination, violence, and old and new forms of segregation against African-Americans. A battle that, according to Jackson himself, is not over. “Black people have higher infant mortality rates, lower life expectancy, higher unemployment, and less education. You pay more to get less. This is our situation, 40 years later,” he declared in recent years.
Although he had a verbal clash with Barack Obama, the latter honored him by emphasizing that without figures like Jesse Jackson, the election of a president with the same skin color as Martin Luther King would not have been possible.
Jackson ran for the White House twice in the early 1980s, a move that was considered unusual and bold at the time. In the Democratic primaries, he faced Walter Mondale in 1984 and Michael Dukakis in 1988, both of whom lost to Republicans Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. However, especially in 1988, when he received about 30 percent of the vote in the primary, Jackson mobilized thousands of African-Americans to register to vote.
This political energy later influenced Bill Clinton's victory in 1992, also supported by the "Rainbow Coalition" led by Jackson.
At the 1992 Democratic National Convention in New York, Jackson gave a speech advocating for Israeli-Palestinian coexistence. His image is often associated with the historic Selma, Alabama, march of 1965, led by Martin Luther King, Andrew Young, and Ralph Abernathy. The march, which began with a few thousand participants and ended with nearly 30,000, was marked by violence, but led to one of the defining moments in American history.
Shortly thereafter, then-President Lyndon Johnson delivered a historic speech in support of African-American suffrage, declaring that "the essence of government is the unwavering concern for the welfare, dignity, and integrity of every individual, regardless of color, creed, origin, sex, or age."
Years later, Republican President Ronald Reagan entrusted Jesse Jackson with a delicate diplomatic mission to secure the release of an American pilot in Syria. He later hosted him at the White House and publicly thanked him.
A period that many describe as a special chapter in American political history. /Adapted from "Corriere Della Sera"
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