The Rev. Jesse Jackson, the civil rights leader and two-time presidential candidate who died Feb. 17, was no stranger to Daytona Beach.
Jackson, who was 84 when he died at his Chicago home, urged Bethune-Cookman University students to vote and voiced his displeasure at the university’s 2017 invitation to then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to speak at commencement. He met with top NASCAR brass to discuss diversifying their sport. And he weighed in on preserving early voting access in Volusia County.
The Rev. L. Ronald Durham, a longtime Volusia County civil rights activist, hosted Jackson during a 2012 visit and had gotten to know Jackson in the 1980s when Durham pastored a church in Newark, New Jersey, and they worked together to combat racial profiling on the New Jersey Turnpike.
“Today, our nation lost a towering moral voice, and I lost a mentor whose life served as a blueprint to my own calling to the ministry,” Durham said. “The passing of Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson Sr., marks the sunset really of not just an era, but the dawn of a legacy that will forever illuminate the path toward justice.”
Durham called Jackson “the ultimate servant leader,” who “showed us the pulpit is not a place of retreat from the world,” but a platform to challenge the United States to live up to its highest ideals.
Cynthia Slater, president of the Daytona Beach branch of the NAACP, sent The News-Journal a statement honoring Jackson’s life.
“Rev. Jackson was a powerful voice and civil rights icon who is credited for advancing the rights of Black America by fighting for racial justice and equality,” the statement reads. “His movement was about hope that we as a people are responsible for changing the paths of future generations. He was a voice of consciousness, and he will always be remembered for his relationship with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”
Jackson ‘carried the mantle’ after Martin Luther King’s assassination
Jackson—who shared the same Memphis, Tennessee, motel balcony where King, his mentor, was assassinated on April 4, 1968—was traumatized, he said in interviews. But he would not let King’s death end the fight for civil rights for people of color.
“Rev. Jackson was more than just a civil rights icon,” Durham said. “He was a living bridge between the struggles of the past during the Jim Crow and segregation era and the possibilities of a brighter future for African Americans in America. He carried the mantle of his mentor and my mentor, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., through what I believe were some of the most turbulent decades of our nation’s history, standing on the front lines of voting rights struggles and opening doors in corporate boardrooms that had been slammed shut for literally centuries.”
In 2012, Durham’s Greater Friendship Baptist Church in Daytona Beach was one of several in Florida—including New Smyrna Beach, Palatka, and Sanford—to host Jackson at “Souls to the Polls” events.
Jackson stumped for the incumbent president that year.
“What makes the Barack Obama case compelling is not complexion,” Jackson said in his poetic way. “It’s direction.”
Durham said he was a freshman at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, when King was assassinated, and that helped steer him to the ministry. He was a pastor at a church in Newark, where Blacks were complaining about being pulled over indiscriminately on the Turnpike.
“I asked Rev. (Al) Sharpton to come to Newark … and he did come and he brought Rev. Jackson with him, and that was the first time I met him,” Durham said.
The three were part of a protest that shut down the Turnpike in both directions in 1988, Durham said, leading to changes.
Durham said he spent some time, including a meal with Jackson once at a luxury hotel in Washington, D.C.
“Outside of the spotlight, he had a tremendous sense of humor,” Durham said. “In fact, when we were having breakfast at the Waldorf Astoria, I remember vividly him saying that Rev. Al Sharpton would rather have breakfast at the Waldorf than go to heaven.”
B-CU officials release statement of mourning
At Bethune-Cookman University, where Jackson visited with then-President Oswald Bronson in 1996 and in 2000 urged students to vote, officials issued a statement offering condolences to his family and prayers for those he inspired.
“We join the nation in mourning the passing Rev. Jesse Jackson, a towering figure and servant leader in the civil rights movement. His ministry extended far beyond the pulpit and into the streets, halls of power and the hearts of millions,” the B-CU statement reads.
“Rev. Jesse Jackson’s life embodied the very principles upon which Bethune-Cookman University was founded—faith, education, advocacy, and an unyielding pursuit of justice. Like our founder, Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, Rev. Jackson understood that education and civic engagement are powerful tools for transformation and that leadership must always be anchored in service.”
In 2017, Jackson called The News-Journal to express his concerns about B-CU hosting DeVos, a cabinet member from the first Donald Trump administration. He accused DeVos of turning her back on Black colleges and praised students who peacefully protested by turning their backs on her when she spoke.
“I wish now Dr. DeVos can have a serious dialogue about our real needs. More capital improvement. More research. More Pell Grants. And less discrimination,” Jackson said.
In October 2000, Jackson spoke at B-CU—then known as Bethune-Cookman College—in an effort to motivate students to register and vote.
Jackson told students about how Mary McLeod Bethune “had to beg” for tables, cots and building supplies after founding the institution in 1904.
“She had to sacrifice her dignity to build the school,” he said.
Students not registered to vote are “spitting on her tombstone” and “throwing rocks on Martin Luther King’s tombstone,” Jackson said.
Jackson met with NASCAR officials, too
In attendance at that 2000 Bethune-Cookman event was not just students, but also NASCAR’s senior vice president, Brian France, and chief operating officer, Mike Helton.
France, who largely favored Republicans and later endorsed Donald Trump in 2016, applauded Jackson several times during that 2000 Bethune-Cookman event and said: “He is a tremendous motivator.”
France and Helton attended the rally at Jackson’s request, and later met with him about efforts to get more minorities involved in racing.
Just two days before Jackson’s death, Michael Jordan became the first Black NASCAR team owner to win the Daytona 500.
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Jesse Jackson urged voting, NASCAR diversity in Daytona
Reporting by Mark Harper, Daytona Beach News-Journal / The Daytona Beach News-Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
