STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We have two perspectives now on the life of Jesse Jackson. Jackson has died at the age of 84, and we've been hearing this morning about an aide to Martin Luther King who went on to run for president.
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JESSE JACKSON: America will get better and better. Keep hope alive, keep hope alive, keep hope alive.
INSKEEP: Whatever you thought of him, you knew that voice. That was his speech from the 1988 Democratic Convention. Our own Michel Martin was there, and that was not her first encounter with Reverend Jackson. She followed his campaign as a local political reporter and then for a PBS "Frontline" documentary. Michel, good morning.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Good morning.
INSKEEP: I want to start with that 1988 convention, one of his most famous moments. What was that moment like in the hall and for America?
MARTIN: It was electrifying, I think, in a way that may only have been matched some, you know, 20-plus years later when Barack Obama became the nominee for president, even though there was really no chance that Reverend Jackson was going to become the Democratic nominee. It was just a remarkable sense of just electricity in that hall and a sense that something had been achieved that many people did not think was possible.
INSKEEP: He was on a stage where people did not imagine him being. It was the second time he'd run for president. He ended up being second in the balloting in the primaries behind Michael Dukakis, who ultimately won the election. So that is one side of Jesse Jackson. But he affected a lot of people's lives. How did he affect yours, Michel?
MARTIN: Well, exactly, Steve. We were talking about this actually some time ago, that I remember first encountering Reverend Jackson as sort of a figure, as an idea, as a public figure when I was 9. And there was a local reporter in New York City, where I grew up, named Melba Tolliver who worked for the ABC affiliate, the owned and operated station, who was taken off the air because she had gone on vacation, had stopped straightening her hair and put her hair into an Afro, or what we would call a natural.
The station took her off the air, saying that it was a radical hairstyle. And so Reverend Jackson organized a picket of the station. And this went on for some 10 days or something like that until the station agreed to put her back on the air, wearing her hair as she chose. And I, in solidarity with Melba, stopped straightening my hair at that point. And I've worn it in a natural hairstyle...
INSKEEP: Oh.
MARTIN: ...Ever since, much to the chagrin of my mother at that time.
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
MARTIN: But it has become my signature. And that's how I first became aware that Jesse Jackson was someone to be reckoned with. Subsequently, as a political reporter, of course, I covered his campaign. And people forget - I think they see him as a towering figure in his own right. But I think what's really important to think about is his mentorship. Many of the people who worked on his political campaigns, his '84 and his '88 campaign, went on to become a force in their own right. I mean, the first Black county executive in the jurisdiction where I covered, a Black congressman.
I mean, many people in the Civil Rights Movement, of course, went into politics. But he not only became a figure himself, he trained other people. They cut their teeth on his national campaign. And that gave them the skills to go on and do other things.
INSKEEP: Amazing. Michel, stay with us. Leila is going to bring another voice into the conversation here. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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