In late 1990s, the Rev. Jesse Jackson arrived in Stark County just hours after posting bail following his arrest during a protest in Chicago.
Over the years, Jackson visited Stark County as a featured speaker at the University of Mount Union’s Schooler Lecture Series and at Kent State University’s Stark campus in Jackson Township.
Jackson, a protege of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., died Feb. 17 following a battle with Parkinson’s disease. He was 84.
“Rev. Jesse Jackson, along with other SCLC peers, continued to carry the Civil Rights torch after the assassination of Dr. King,” said the Rev. Brian Shields, pastor of Community Christian Church in North Canton. “For example, he established the Rainbow PUSH Coalition and ran for president twice. Rev. Jackson contributed to our country by keeping civil rights on the conscience of America.”
Thomas West, former executive director of the Greater Stark County Urban League, was in high school when Jackson first ran for president in 1984.
“He was the president we never had,” West said. “He taught us that even losing big elections, you could still be impactful. He was not only impactful here in the United States, but all across the world.”
Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition was instrumental in calling on corporations to offer more opportunities, West said.
“And that they understand the African-American community and open doors to African-American communities, not only for people to have internships and for people to have jobs but also to have contracts,” West said.
West recalled Jackson’s story about his grandmother’s quilt.
“It will always resonate in my mind when he talked about his grandmother’s blanket,” he said. “That quilt represented the key to success in any political office. We all have constituencies that are made up of all these different patches, right? But collectively, if we all brought our patches together, they can cover us. Individually we can’t be covered. We have all these different people out here, but all of our issues can’t get solved alone. They have to be solved together.”
‘Hey Doc, where’s my hankie?’
The Rev. Walter Arrington, senior pastor at People’s Baptist Church in Canton and president of the Greater Canton Martin Luther King Commission, met and spoke with Jackson a number of times.
Arrington recalled lending a perspiring Jackson his handkerchief during his speech at Mount Union in 1991.
“I never got it back,” he said with a laugh.
“I’ve been in his presence a number of times. He was always that person who was informative. The next place I saw him was at the National Baptist Convention, and I said, ‘Hey Doc, where’s my hankie?’ He kind of looked at me really weird, you know, and I said, ‘Remember you came to Canton?’ So anyway, we had a laugh about that, and then when he was running for president, I encountered him in Atlanta at a conference for pastors.”
Jackson had the ability to use his speeches to connect people to God, Arrington said.
“The emphasis was more on the message of encouragement and our connection with the Lord, as opposed to the nature of his craft and skill,” he said. “He was a powerful preacher in the fact that the message that he preached could move people from one point to another.”
Arrington said Jackson fought for justice until his illness made it impossible.
“He lasted a good while,” he said. “But nevertheless as long as he could, he stayed in the fight. And he fought for a whole lot of people. We certainly owe him a debt of gratitude and we thank the Lord for him.”
‘He was a great orator’
Ruby Groves has been part of the Featured Speakers Series at Kent State Stark for years. The senior secretary worked the events for decades.
The series features a diverse group of speakers from astronauts and poets to politicians.
In the early years, Shirley Chisholm, Ralph Nader, Julian Bond and Tom Wolfe visited the campus.
During the later half of 1990s, Jackson was scheduled to speak at Kent State Stark as part of the series, but his arrest the prior night left organizers wondering if he would make his speech in Stark County.
“Lucky for us, he was released from jail and was able to fly in and was here for the presentation,” she recalled.
Jackson’s visit to the Stark campus was exciting. Organizers knew the auditorium in the campus main hall, which held about 350 people, wasn’t going to accommodate the crowd.
They moved the event to the field house gym, allowing guests to spill into the bleachers and seats on the floor.
Groves estimates more than 600 people packed the field house to hear Jackson’s words.
“I could tell the crowd was very excited to see him,” she said. “Everyone was just so fascinated that we could get him on our campus.”
Unfortunately, Groves tried to listen to his speech but her job duties kept her busy.
“There was a lot of behind-the-scenes work,” she said. “He was a great orator and really held their attention. The fact that he had just gotten out of jail, he was making a lot of jokes about it.”
Groves greeted Jackson when he arrived, shaking his hand and telling him they were thrilled to have him on campus. She didn’t get a picture with him but many others did.
“Everyone was looking forward to shaking his hand and getting a picture,” she said as she chuckled that they didn’t have camera phones back then.
“He was really very gracious,” Groves said.
This article originally appeared on The Repository: ‘He stayed in the fight.’ Remembering Jesse Jackson’s visits to Stark
Reporting by Charita M. Goshay and Amy L. Knapp, Canton Repository / The Repository
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