'I Am...Somebody,' and the Reach of Rev. Jesse Jackson

Peace y’all,

Reverend Jesse Jackson died today. This morning, I remembered that I once ran into him in the lobby of an Oakland hotel.

I had flown to the Bay Area from Florida the night before to join the last stretches of filming for Ugly Delicious, the culinary-travel-history Netflix series hosted by David Chang. This was November 2018. My call time was early that morning and I was groggy from the travel and time change.

I’d been casually pacing around, looking for the crew—I was either the first to emerge or in the wrong place and I didn’t want anyone calling me to ask where I was. Early doesn’t matter if you’re not where you’re expected to be.

When an elevator dinged behind me, I instinctively turned around. The reverend strolled into the lounge area casually dressed in an athletic-style pullover. He seemed to also be looking for someone and we locked eyes for a moment. Instantly recognizing him, I smiled. He returned a full grin, winked, and put his finger to his lips to gesture, “Shhh.” I giggled. He flittered his fingers toward me—a wave goodbye, or magical spell?

He never stopped moving and meandered past me, maybe into a waiting vehicle out front. I think I was distracted by someone from the production team calling my name. I felt such comfort in the brief exchange. Reverend Jackson had a distinctive walk that I’d seen across the TV screen throughout my lifetime, the tall frame of an ex-college football player mixed with the distinctive lean only Black men coming of age in the 1960s could pull off. Cool. Heavy.

His stroll that morning was perhaps altered by age or injury, I couldn’t be sure. But there he was. A flash of conspiratorial mischief in his wink, a grandfatherly warmth across his face. We didn’t exchange any words, but for the spark I felt, he might as well have hugged me.

I can just barely recall memories of my parents discussing Jesse Jackson seeking the Democratic nomination as candidate for president, at the time, he was only the second Black person to attempt it following the trailblazing Shirley Chisolm.

I’ve known the catchphrases of his civic outreach like lyrics to a song your parents played throughout your childhood. “I Am, Somebody,” the declaration to Black people—particularly Black youth, in the dawn of claiming Blackness as a cultural and personal identifier of beauty, pride, and possibility. His recitation and remixing of the poem originally authored by Reverend Williams Holmes Borders, became core for the primarily Black and brown children that early Sesame Street producers targeted. Watch the call-and-response clip from a 1972 episode, the same year he’d deliver it at the Wattstax Music Festival. It’s a rousing call to action. It’s a call to love as one’s original and most vital politic. He understood that true public servants are born out of a love for one’s neighbors and that representation at the policy level begins with popular culture.

Jackson founded the Rainbow Coalition, which came to fruition after Operation PUSH (People United to Serve Humanity), a vision for equitable political representation across a landscape of diverse peoples of varied income status, religious affiliation, and race. He advocated for social programs that centered system-impacted, low-income communities and that placed civil rights as the fundamental goal of any politic. His well-known phrase, “Keep Hope Alive,” became shorthand for generations, a reminder that resiliency, optimism, and progress demand our collective willingness to imagine brighter futures.

Reflecting on the life of Reverend Jackson, from being protégé to Martin Luther King, Jr. as a young man and bearing witness to King’s 1968 assassination to being celebrated (and criticized) as the commanding heir to King’s legacy of civil rights work in the decades that followed, I’m reminded of my grandmother’s career in government during the Reagan era that shaped both hers and Jackson’s careers.

A while back, I secured several copies of the June 1981 issue of EBONY because my grandmother, Ruth Rushen, is featured in it. She was a prominent public figure in California government having become yet another “first” in her career—this time the first Black person and first woman to oversee the state prison system under Governor Jerry Brown. She had spent nearly two decades in the Los Angeles County Probation Department and five years on the state parole board (the first woman to serve in such a capacity). At the time, California had the second-largest prison system in the United States, including those of infamy: Folsom and San Quentin. The article notes she recommended against the parole of members of the Charles Manson family.

In the accelerated ideation of the individual as pilot of one’s financial success that defined the 1980s, it was notable for public figures to shift focus to systemic patterns that affected peoples’ lives. During my grandmother’s tenure, Ms. Rushen as she was known to most, voiced concern about overcrowded space for the incarcerated, a need for enriching vocational and industrial programs for personal development, and she expressed compassion for the people impacted by socio-political pipelines that landed them at correctional facilities to begin with.

“If we want to do something about crime in our society, we’re going to have to make up our minds about what we are going to risk and how much responsibility we’re willing to accept,” she said in the profile. “There is a lot of money that passes out of the ghetto into the other part of society. Arresting the little pusher in Watts is not going to stop crime—you can bust him all day long. You really have to go to Beverly Hills and find the guy who’s financing it. You certainly know the millions are not in Watts.”

She decried rhetoric about reducing crime that ignored the countless opportunities to be curious about what drives someone to it before they land in the system. “What is it that’s causing this kind of anger and violence,” she asked in the profile. “We need to look at that. And passing it up to the prison system for 20 years is really not going to do it…We have to get at something much more basic in our society.” I see resonance in the message Jackson delivered throughout his life in what Grandma shared in the magazine issue they share. For me it’s a notable overlap of history and PR as a tool for activism, whether attempting to work within or beyond the system.

I don’t know whether Grandma was Jackson’s biggest fan. Often being the only woman in the room, she had a lot to say about men in leadership by the time I came of age. As one Gen X Instagram commenter affectionately put it, “Young Jesse was a problem!”

But I’m inspired by the impact of Jackson’s life as a public figure and the unyielding effort to realize the vision of the world he dedicated his life to. It’s humbling to note how relevant their respective efforts continue to be today. I suppose Jackson’s death is a reminder of the names my grandmother once spoke aloud and an indication of time passing. She probably would have had something wry and mostly respectful to say. I miss her so much.

Rest in Power to Reverend Jesse Jackson. He was 84 years old. ⭑

Last week, 67% of you shared that Ricky Martin’s segment of the Bad Bunny Halftime Show spoke to you the most. Yo también!

I met Charlotte Druckman in 2018 when she was compiling the roster of contributors that would become Women On Food. I was fortunate to be one of her chosen writers on the anthology project; the essay I wrote for it (which was later excerpted in the Washington Post) became the foundation for my in-progress book on dining culture.

The experience of working with a rare writer-who-edits seeded the beginning of our friendship and sisterhood. A Manhattan native, Charlotte is one of the most accomplished culture writers in the business. Her work ranges from reporting on restaurants, to writing cookbooks, reviewing literary books, and behind-the-scenes consulting on groundbreaking third spaces.

In the forthcoming Love in the Afternoon, and Evening she and fellow culture writer Mayukh Sen have come together to discuss the great culture pillar of the soap opera (daytime and primetime). Soaps make up a genre that similar to recipes, are often dismissed despite their cultural impact, political subject matter, sartorial influence, and historic shaping of how we orient ourselves around television viewing today.

Mayukh and I got to know one another through food culture journalism (we memorably received our first James Beard Awards on the same night), and he’s author of Love, Queenie, the biography of Merle Oberon, which was recently named a finalist by the National Book Critics Circle. This is a special collaboration of two friends and thought leaders who refuse to be badgered by rigid notions of genre.

Their book is available for pre-order now and is set for a May 2026 release. I cannot wait.