Reverend Jesse & Jacqueline Jackson

it all, nearly sixty years. I was really looking forward to it. Only problem, our flight from New York was severely delayed and we were five hours late for our date. It was awful. I really hate being late for anything. But even though it was already evening by the time we landed, they said, come on over anyway. I've known them for decades and that's the kind of generous people they are. Oh the children, well, they all still talk

to me. That's a good side. Jesse was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease several years ago, but despite his condition, his spirits were lively and Jackie, she's always full of life. As we settled in, Jesse began to recall their early days. I prison met Jackie. She was in college. She was into modern dass, she's hid been to the library and beautiful begun measure. Parents are restrict on her. Those are pluses. She was in church all the time. Those are pluses.

So you beginning you saying you evaluate what values you share the foundation with. Many mergers don't last long as they have no mottle rootage. It told tree roossa's deep as the tree is high, the little roots, that's another foundation. The wind blows, they can't take it. That's why I see. And what tree grows without roots, it cannot grow grow right. I can't get over how lucky you were to find Jackie. I mean, other women would have run out the door

because you were never home. I love you. I was lucky. I told him because he was going and going and going, and then he wouldn't inform me. I went to him and I said, Reverend, you're supposed to make me happy. And I was, I mean, because I really felt a man is supposed to make you happy, that's his job. We've always had a very kind of said my frank relationship. And he looked at me and he said, I can't do that. Looks like, what do you mean, can't make

me happy? He said, that's your responsibility to you. Whoa oh. I hated him. I was depressed for months. It's like, that's not why you get married. Partner secure. I'm going to finish my story. But that's an interesting thing to say that you thought he should make you happy. I thought he should make me happy. But he helped me to grow because I think after year, after hating him for a full year, planning a divorce and running away, um I figured it out. Um, there are things he

enjoys that I don't. He likes sports and early in the marriage, which I wanted, I love theater. I need to go to sleep and snore. And that was very embarrassing for me, and it occurred to me that I shouldn't humiliate him by imposing onto him the things that I absolutely enjoy. And he made me miserable when we did it together. And yet he was opening his thinking that I could call my friends and we could go

out to the theater. You know, in many of these relationships, if you don't like what I do, there is a serious problem, but you can make it beyond liking what I do in retrospect, have it overhead in common. It's been married and building. We we demonstrated together. We resented southern segregation, We resented the barbarism or racist institutions, visions for our children. And at the end of the day,

it's about mutual to mutual security and fulfillment. If for rest it is as exciting, it's as young, as fresh, as sexy. But then there's responsibility comblems, and you had to share your resources. I mean, one of the problems of love is trust. And you trust somebody, you can't trust. Love will asks very long. You can't trust somebody and trust to make decisions that matter to you. Love matters soon. But love has a mature and the air qualities of

life that add to love's maturity. Why didn't you tell me these things? Zac was academically in kind, and so was I either as incoming. She was trist based and so was I. She marched for our freedom and our dignity, and we did that together. We took risk together. But that was said, I want you to leave seminary and work with me full time. I was determined to ben

seminary jacket. You should you should go work with that man when he was vacillating as to whether or not to keep his scholarship at the Chicago Theological Seminary through the Rockefeller Foundation. He had a scholarship to be here in Illinois at the school, So our housing and everything was in that package. Uh. And so when it came time for Reverend to make the decision, he was trying to weigh, what's to happen with my family if I

go fully with this guy full time? Uh, doctor King, Doctor King, and and so, And what he's saying is I I just thought, I'm not sure if I've ever murdered someone else said they would have made that decision. None of my friends, and that we're going safe for the Urban League or something. It made more let's risk and they had kind of stable administrative jobs. Dartine was you might not come home, and you did not make any money, and and and did you give up the scholarship?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course he accepted doctor King's offer to join him. Jesse had been on this journey for civil justice since that historic summer in college in nineteen sixty. He'd been assigned a paper to write and needed to borrow a book from the local library in Greenville, South Carolina. It was a white library, and when they refused to give him the book, he went out back and cried. Eventually, he and his friends went back to that same library and staged a sit in

in protest. We went to the library together, we were arrested. That's I lost my film death in jails. Frankly, the first time I went to jail, we were booked the afternoon. But the fact that we've been going to be booked, it was a book deal all over television was a breakthrough. I got home. I was never get my father. Who I got alarms my party from my father. That's your stepfather, father, And so it's the janitor. And we go by the bag on the Sunday afternoon. We would buff the floors

and into the hands. Anyhow, the door open and missed the man who was in charge of the firm with two of his friends. They were tall guys, kind of drinking the red in the face. Yeah, then trying to come here at seven. I was very aware of the tone and who had that meant. He said, if you look him, I'm gonna krick you. That's not the buve machine. There's keys. The hope was what happened. He walt, miss sympathy,

you take the keys. I can't subject kicking me, and you can't delay it back with you do the kick in either we walked out the bank. My policy for watching that acts of bravery. My father, Jesse's activism with doctor King took him deeper and deeper into the civil rights movement, so their work was often on the front pages of the newspapers. Can you imagine how complicated it must have been for Jesse and Jackie to be doing

all of that. It's kids to raise. I had three children at that time, small children and one daughter sent Teeter and two boys who want ten months apart. That's pretty high schools all America. I never spoke with the high school. Yeah, I want to be just a Jackson's daughter. You see, that's attention because how they got you legal shit this high profile. So and so my wife slept in the gap. One time, Jesse and Junior said, I come home from the room and its team to the

basketball game up at the academy. I didn't go. You said that. I appreciate all you've done. But another night, my mother comes to my game to see me play ball. I felt bad about it because I'm having I'm always ago shame between how the hell of this Jesse Jackson factor? And so it was about assuming responsibility, whether jack understood it and she transmitted it to them. In my work, I never was inhibited from doing what I had to do. My creativity was unlimited in times filling the road and

my work was risky. More Over, we had threats and around the house beguns. We moved from the University of Chicago right because we were working with doctor King, and because of our work, we had access to many of the people who were products of the Great Migration. That's when so many African Americans, with the oppression in the

South cave to Illinois. Most of those people are deceased now because that was a another age our elders and because they knew that we had worked, we were working with doctor King, and people kind of dove in and embraced us and protected us. We lived on the third floor of their apartment. And I remember who Spencer League now, who is one of the largest funeral power services in this area African American, and I remember his mother saying, You'll be very safe here. You'll be safe. Jackie is

such a brave and determined woman. She wanted to be down in the trenches with the people they were fighting for. That's right. She didn't have what Jesse calls first lady ITAs. I like this. I like to sit in the audience because one you sit in the audience, you can hear what they truly think. I go to the grocery store and I interact with people in the parking lot. I fight over my right to park in this space. And you saw me here first. And then somebody will say,

aren't you Jesse Jackson's wife. I said, no, she's I left her at home. No, I'm jack Well, I Jackson. I still exist. You know, I can think for myself. And I think women are very essential in holding a marriage, and marriages are based on the attitude really of a woman. If she wants, if she wants to keep it, she will keep it. And if she's finished with it completely, it's it's done. We'll have more. After a quick break, we're back to our conversation with Reverend Jesse Jackson and

Jacqueline Jackson. Jackie never had first Lady IDAs, but that's because she was already doing her own thing, traveling the world, with diplomatic delegations and on fact finding missions. Jackie met a Fat first the delegation in Lebanon. I met him as Jack's husband, this international dimission of her life of vision. She met Daniel take a first and Castro and are Fat and middlease home with the field. Jack was in Lebanon, and there were moment So I don't tell you. There

were moment I panicked and she can't make you. I could hear myself. I couldn't imagine her being over there and me be at home, and a lot you lay. You both have led a purposeful life, and you both have supported each other and inspired each other, it feels most of the time. Now. That does not mean that we don't fight. I have to fight with him to keep him sharp, and I do that every morning we have our exercise. I shouted him and I call him names. What what? What? What's ther name? You go? I'm not

telling you. It's our little secret. Call you return. You'll never forget it. So I just take that blue. Let me just comment about how I see you. First of all, you're both very good looking, always have been. And Jesse really enters the room. I mean, he's a tree He's like, you know, that's very tall, and I have a feeling that you know, you can yell at him and he's not gonna run out the door. He won't run out the door. He takes bunches. Oh, he's good, un profound.

You're not jealous of him, You're never concerned. It seems to me. I'm not jealous of him. No, you're not worried about I'm not worried about it. Mister tallman. Yeah, good looking. I was. We went out one night and this lady was so stunned to see reverend, so she ran past me and she just grabbed him by his neck and she just swung and swung, swung, and I kept moving further back. It's like, I'm not getting the

hell beat out of me. You deal with the woman until and he comes saying, my wife Jackie, got in my wife Jackie. I think we've been in that situation a few times. Well, perhaps, but there was a more serious intrusion into the Jackson's marriage. We were in Atlanta, maybe yeah, and this woman walked up to me. My god, she was gorgeous, and she was saying, and she had her camera and she said, I want to take a picture, and I said, oh you can. She said, and who

are you? I said, I'm his wife. She said, how can you stay with him after he went out there and had this baby? I said, this one is taken and you cannot stay around him too long because you're too good looking. Now you take your picture and leave. What baby? What she talking? The California reverend has a child. I have five children. Reverend has six. So was this woman's child? No, but she wanted to address it, and I wanted to let her know that I could. Well.

I asked a question, I don't know about this baby thing. Would you mind telling me? I don't discuss it because it's something in my past that I dealt with, and I feel very comfortable. The young lady now is about Ashley's about twenty, and she's ad spellman in school. And I'm very comfortable and I'm very h Well, did you get mad at him? Did you throw him out? Or? An? Of course I did, because I uh, you know, as a wife, you feel you're the sexiest, you're the best.

I'm trying to say before we go, is this well, days of sunshine and the wind behind your back there random days too. I don't think it's I don't like to say that. I think there are some realities. I think we are people. Nobody in this game, in this world today it's perfect. We're imperfect beings. There are a lot of flaws. And one of the things my attitude in life is I don't like to discuss problems of anybody. Tell how you got out of it, Tell me how

you feel today, Tell me how you move forward. I call him reverence, so it reminds him of who he should be. What interested me when you said that is you kept that marriage together. Yes, you said, this is not going to destroy my marriage. I promised in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, through triumphs and sorrows. This marriage is a test of my character and I and I learned this from my mother. Every time I received my report card, the first thing

she looked at was my character. I don't look for good people. I try to be it myself and be the example. And that's a test of my character. Oh, I so admire you. I do you know. I am very proud to be a woman. If I have another chance to come back, I want to be a woman. I love and I love being an African American woman. I want women to be the very best people. Women are so necessary for men, and that's why women were created last, so that all of the finest ingredients that

God may have missed when you were being composed. The Lord thought about Lord stopped, rested, said when he looked at men, I need a little help, and he's going to need some help. And God I'd sat down and thought about it and created me the second draft. I'm Mumuranella was plaut Israel. Well, I would not I would not have to do without my wife. I'm pretty good he didn't take me first. I'd be lost. I couldn't survive.

That's the Reverend Jesse Jackson and Jacqueline Jackson. It's amazing their hard work for justice and their long partnership had been a part of American history. They certainly have. And I've got to say, it was fun to be back in Chicago again. Yep, just like the old days. Until next time. I'm Phil Donahue and I'm Marlo Thomas. I really thank you and it was a delightful interview. Double Day.

It's a production of Pushkin Industries. The show was created by US and produced by Sarah Michael Bahari is Associate producer. Musical adaptations of It Had to Be You by Stellwagon, Symfinette, Marlo and I are executive producers, along with Mia Lobell and Letal Molad from Pushkin Special thanks to Jacob Wiseberg, Malcolm Gladwell, Heather Faine, John Snars, Carly Migliori, Eric Sandler,

Emily Rostak, Jason Gambrel, Paul Williams, and Bruce Kluger. If you like our show, please remember to share, rate, and review. Thanks for listening.