Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson mourned, celebrated in Bay Area after death

During his groundbreaking presidential bid in 1984, the Rev. Jesse Jackson kissed babies in San Jose, spoke at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco and marched with 100 residents of an Oakland housing project to the boundary of a polling place.

“There comes a point that leaders can’t take you any farther and you must go on your own,” he was quoted by United Press International as saying during the 1984 march.

That kind of retail campaigning was typical. What wasn’t typical was Jackson himself: the first Black candidate to mount a viable national campaign for the presidency and win substantial support in a race for the country’s highest office.

With Jackson’s death Tuesday, leaders across the region reflected on a legacy that helped shape a generation of local activism and public service — none more so than Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee, a close friend for more than five decades.

“He was larger than life,” Lee told this news organization. “He really changed the course of American politics.”

Lee first met Jackson in 1972 at the National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana, where thousands of African Americans gathered to chart a new political future. At the time, she was a student at Mills College in Oakland. She said she was drawn to his unapologetic message of progress and hope and to the way he fused faith and politics in his speeches.

Their partnership extended beyond the United States. Lee said they traveled together to South Africa as election observers at the end of apartheid, when Nelson Mandela won the presidency. Jackson also helped negotiate the release of hostages in Iraq and Cuba, and the two welcomed some of them home at the airport.

Jackson’s presence in the Bay Area went beyond campaign stops and global diplomacy.

In 1986, he joined thousands of striking cannery workers in Watsonville during an 18-month walkout led largely by Mexican and Mexican American women. The strike became a flashpoint over labor rights and economic justice on the Central Coast. As he addressed workers, union leaders stood behind him holding signs in Spanish.

“Rev. Jackson amplified that struggle and reminded us that justice requires courage and persistence,” said Monterey County Supervisor Luis Alejo, who represents Salinas. “We are forever grateful to Rev. Jackson for standing with our mothers when it truly mattered.”

Decades later, he engaged Silicon Valley during a period of mounting scrutiny over diversity in tech. In the 2010s, Jackson visited a school in the Oakland hills and urged a group of young men to stay out of trouble and to embrace the tech industry. At a time of mounting concern over the lack of diversity in Silicon Valley — dominated by white men — Jackson successfully pressured Uber to release demographic data showing its staff was overwhelmingly male.

For many local leaders, his presidential campaigns were formative. U.S. Rep. Sam Liccardo, a former San Jose mayor, said he cast his first vote at 18 for Jackson.

“I’m forever grateful for his service and inspiration,” Liccardo said.

For Lee, the bond was deeply personal.

When her mother died 11 years ago, Jackson came to the hospital to pray at her bedside. The last time Lee saw him was the day after Christmas in Chicago. Jackson, who had Parkinson’s disease, struggled to speak but was “so happy” to meet her grandchildren for the first time, she said. He had officiated the wedding of one of her sons at Mills College years earlier.

Lee said Jackson’s legacy is best captured in the phrase he repeated throughout his career: “Keep hope alive.”

“In this day and time with Donald Trump, and the horrible mess that he has made in the world, I have to remind people of Reverend Jackson,” she said. “Keep hope alive. Because if you don’t keep hope alive, people perish.”